


And We Let the Scales Fall

by CrackleTack



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fish out of Water, Gen, Hogwarts Fourth Year, Past Relationship(s), Slytherins Being Slytherins, Time Travel, Well-Meaning Albus Dumbledore, Wizard Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 08:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21051101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackleTack/pseuds/CrackleTack
Summary: Salazar Slytherin stumbles a thousand years into the future, just as Hogwarts is getting ready to host the Tri-Wizard tournament. His arrival causes havoc not only for himself but for the modern magical world. He's a mess, and a relic, and a problem, and everyone has an angle he needs to understand.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify the tags (which I will add and edit as I post). The relationship of Godric/Salazar/Rowena/Helga happened in the past and while I will reference it, this story takes place in the present where three of the founders are dead. Since there is no romance in the present (at the moment) I am categorizing this as a Gen story for now.
> 
> Also I apologize in advance for the Google Translate.

* * *

“Fly, you tarturus scum, and blacken these halls no more!” Godric swung his longsword down, nearly taking his opponent's head, who dodged away just in time.

“Godric!” Salazar yelled, stumbling backward down the steps of Hogwarts' great hall, and out the doors into the rain. Rowena, Helga and a small crowd of children stood behind Godric in the doorway, light spilling around them. Some of the little ones were crying and clutching skirts and trousers, but the witches remained cold and aloof. Salazar looked up at them all with a narrow cut bleeding on his left cheek.

“Go!” Godric shouted and charged into the rain, swinging his sword again. Salazar leapt back, sliding in the mud beyond the flagstones and narrowly avoiding the blade again.

“You can not kill me!” Salazar raged back, a gust of vengeful wind whipping through the rain. Godric chopped through it with an underhanded swing and the force of clashing wills caused the shiny blade of his longsword to crack down the middle. The end of it fell to the ground like dead iron and left the shining upper part in Godric's hand no bigger than a child's toy.

“You're right, old friend,” Godric snarled. “I may despise you, but I cannot kill you.” He drew himself up and pointed the broken tip of his sword down the steps like a king. “Salazar of the Slytherin, you are banished forthwith from the castle of Hogwarts.”

The castle shook to its foundations as Gryffindor's proclamation rang out. Salazar let out a mighty scream, his voice rending the earth as the curse fell upon him. Huge cracks opened along the cliffs of the black lake. Chunks of soil and rock lifted into the air and Hogwarts wailed as one of her founders was carved away from her like an amputated sore.

Salazar Slytherin fell to his knees and then began to fade under a curtain of rain, until he finally disappeared into fog and shadow and nothing but water pattered the ground where the great man once knelt.

  
_One thousand years later_

  
“.. and so the evil Slytherin vanished. Gryffindor went on to defeat the trolls at Waynes Cot, Ravenclaw to build the first great library, right here at Hogwarts, and Hufflepuff raised the first mounds as sanctuaries for healers and the sick. They made great strides for our kind, but of Slytherin, there was never a word.”

“Where did he go?” A wide eyed first year asked in a piping voice.

“Well.” The two red headed Weasley twins leaned over their hoard of pasties and sweets, milking their audience. “Some say he died, others that he went to nurse his hate on a mountain top, and lived as a hermit brewing evil spells. No one knows for sure.”

“Is that really true?” a skeptical third year asked.

“Course it's true! Heard it from sir Taradiddle himself didn't we Gred?”

“That's right Forge, if you don't believe us you can go find the old Duke himself and ask him. Now pay up you lot. Stories don't come for free you know.”

Groans and sighs filled the south end of the Gryffindor table as children dug into their pockets and dropped a smattering of coins on the table. The red headed Weasley twins quickly gathered them up and shooed the younger students away. They were eagerly counting their take when another classmate leaned in.

“Who's Sir Taradiddle?”

“Harry!” The twins exclaimed, turning to embrace the black haired boy that had appeared beside them. “He's in the old frame on the seventh floor, east corridor.”

“The one that's always empty?”

“Exactly.”

“Sooooo... you made him up.”

“More or less, but look at this lot!” Fred gestured to the leaning tower of coins they'd collected. “Definitely worth a small lie or two.”

“Are you sure you two shouldn't have gone to Slytherin?” Harry laughed and slid a large platter of truffle toward himself. The Weasley's grinned.

“Oh, Harry, that hurts mate.”

“Indeed, we are shocked, truly shocked you would think such a thing,” George finished.

“Though, to be fair, you're not far off the mark,” Fred added.

Harry stopped halfway through spooning truffle and gaped at the twins. “No! Are you serious? You and George?”

“Had a close call under the sorting hat. Don't tell mum though. She'd have a fit.”

“Bloody hell,” Harry choked. “I thought I was... well never mind.” He shook off whatever he'd been about to say and knocked his cup with the twins in a toast. “To the secrets of the Sorting Hat.”

“To secrets!” they replied in unison, and all three set about filling their plates with relish, from the glorious Halloween feast laid before them.

Long tables groaned under the weight of food: baked pumpkin, roasted walnuts, apple pie, leak and potato soup, winter squash, fried sausages, and mountains of candy from caramel scarecrows to licorice bats. Jack O Lanterns floated about the ceiling with their eerie faces grinning down at the students, and on a stone pillar in the center of the hall sat The Goblet of Fire, casting wild shadows all over the walls that looked like the ghosts of witches past.

Students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons sat at their own tables as honored guests and the flare they brought to the hall and the thrilling shivers they sent down the spines of Hogwarts firsties all added to the excitement of the feast. Though their Headmaster and Headmistress did not seem very inclined to indulge in silly English merriment, Dumbledore made up for it. He sat at the head of the staff table wearing bright orange and black robes with a joke arrow through his hat. It was all very festive.

Until, that is, a loud crack of thunder rolled through the hall and rain broke through the enchanted ceiling. The students squealed, happy mood broken, and quickly pulled up the hoods of their robes as cold water began pelting them from on high. Harry stashed his dinner up his sleeves while the twins conjured umbrellas, and the first years ducked under their tables. Shrieks of joy and distress bounced around the hall while Dumbledore began waving his wand at the ceiling, as if scolding it for being out of turn.

Then it started to get strange. The castle gave a great moan, like a troll waking from a long nap, and the hall began to lean first one way, and then the other. It rocked like a ship in a storm and Harry grabbed the table, looking round for Ron and Hermione. They were clinging to the doorway, having just arrived in the hall. Students began screaming in earnest now, and Harry joined the older ones in pushing the youngsters under the table.

“Harry! Get down,” George shouted, and shoved him under the table along with the firsties just as a pumpkin fell and splattered where he'd been sitting, followed by a chunk of rock and candles.

The students howled, and Dumbledore started shouting strange, powerful words that didn't sound friendly at all. Teachers were holding spells over the long tables and shielding the young students from falling debris with the help of sixth and seventh year forms. Harry peered out from under a bench and breathed with relief when he saw Hermione and Ron safely stashed under Victor Krum's shield charm. Ron couldn't seem to decide if he was scared of the quaking castle, or in awe at being so close to his Quiditch hero.

Finally, whatever was going on, Dumbledore seemed to get the upper hand and the shuddering, moaning walls settled back into more or less their proper place. Though Harry did notice a few stones sticking mutinously out of the walls.

Silence reigned, and students crawled out from under tables, benches and the sheltering arms of teachers, staring around at the destruction of the great hall with slack jawed amazement. The feast was ruined. Broken pumpkins, candle wax, dust, food and bits of stone littered the hall. Above them however, the stars were shining in the enchanted ceiling. They were brighter then Harry ever remembered seeing them. Though outside he could still hear the rain pattering away.

“What was all that about?” he muttered, helping Dennis Creevy up from his sprawl in a smeared custard tart. The same question seemed to be on everyone's mind, as voices clamored for answers all over the a hall. Predictably, Harry thought, the adults were not forthcoming. Snape was gathering up his Slytherin's who seemed to have congregated around their banner, whispering in suspicious voices. Dumbledore was ordering all the Prefects to see their houses out to the lawn and for someone to check the greenhouses.

“I think it best if we post-pone the ceremony for a day or too, Barty,” The headmaster said to the sallow ministry man, Mr. Crouch, as Harry was pushed past them with the others in his year. Crouch blustered, but relented as Dumbledore insisted, “Champion's and Hero's, while hard to come by need a place to rest their heads as much as anyone. We must make sure everything is right with Hogwarts before a tournament.”

  
~

  
Nearby, unaware of the tumult in Hogwarts, a lean figure appeared on the shore of the black lake. He lay crumbled on the ground as the rain lashed at his back. Trembling fingers moved against the rock. Then an eye strained to blink against the wind. His arms were cold, and his legs felt as if they had been ripped from his body. Distantly, he wondered if they had.

With a great effort he heaved himself onto his elbows and looked down, almost sobbing with relief when he saw his legs, though weak and numb, where still attached. He crawled to his hands and knees and then staggered upright, teetering in the wind.

He could not see where he was, only the slippery stones of a dark cliff. So he placed one trembling foot in front of the other, and began walking. A low chant came up his throat and the hypnotic rhythm guided his feet through one agonizing step after another. It felt like a very old song that he had been singing for a long time.  
  
_Inoiz etxera deitu gaituen lurrak  
_

_Etxera joango gara mendietan zehar_   
  
_ Etxera joango gara,_

Down the rocky bluff and into the long arm of the forest he walked. Spiders and snakes, toads and birds all muttered and it occurred to him that this was new. That he had not heard these sounds in a long time. Even the ground was different. It was harder and more real then he thought it should be. He lifted his face to the sky and drank the clean water that poured down his throat. It was so fresh! So alive!

Was he near her, perhaps? Was he finally close? Was that why he could breath the smell of wood and loam? He'd felt his beloved home out there, the warmth of her granite hearths and the safety of her labyrinth called him onward from that far shore where he'd been flung so long ago. He longed to feel the soft tapestries, and smell crisp vellum.

Everything would be well if he could just be home again. Godric could not ban him. Hogwarts was not Godric's alone. Godric had not built her foundations. Godric had not bargained with goblins and tunneled into the rocks. Godric had not spent every fall speaking with the wheat, or urging the forest back, so they might have land to build.

He walked on, and each painful step brought him closer to the gates.

  
~

  
It was nearly midnight. The castle had been rumbling for hours and Dumbledore was at a bit of a loss, which was not a position he often found himself in. Once you reached the venerable age of a hundred and forty there was not much left to surprise you. Which made the current, for lack of a better word, temper tantrum of Hogwarts castle both baffling and thrilling.

“Don't you think so, Professor?” he asked his deputy headmistress, who did not look at all thrilled.

“Albus, this is no time for eccentrics!”

“Crouch is nearly purple with indignation,” Severus added with a look that might have been just a little smug. He was not fond of Crouch. “He will doubtless be filing a complaint with the minister by morning, and your standing with Fudge is already on shaky ground.”

“I'm sure it will all work out Severus.”

“Forgive me if I do not share your optimism, Headmaster.”

“I have to agree with Severus, Albus, this is quiet serious. Has anything like this ever happened at Hogwarts?” Minerva gave the stone archway a severe look, as if it were a tardy student.

“Not that we know of, but then it would be frightfully boring if we knew everything.” Dumbledore said and walked along, examining the walls. “The muggles call such occurrences, Earth Quakes, or Seismic Shifts. Quite natural according to them.”

Snape looked like he'd swallowed a slug.

“Oh Albus, really. What drivel.” McGonagall huffed, just as the Castle made a sudden moan and the stones began shuddering again. Dumbledore wandered off, taking on the bow legged gait of a sailor as the hallway pitched and rolled, and the two heads of house followed at a loss, since they truly had no idea why the castle had taken to shaking it's foundations. That however, was not the only thing being shaken at Hogwarts. Tapestries and banners flapped of their own accord, dislodging accumulated dust, and looking brighter then before. The stones took on a happy shine while suits of armor sprang to life and began buffing themselves.

“It's almost as if--” Albus started, eyeing the suits over his half moon spectacles before suddenly being cut off by a deep boom.

“Those were the doors,” McGonagall whispered in alarm, and all three sped down the hall, robes flapping. They met Mad-Eye Moody at the bottom of the stairs as he rushed out of the great hall and together the company turned and faced the huge double doors, which normally guarded the castle at night. The doors had swung open and a rainy breeze was blowing into the hall, spattering water and dead leaves on the flagstones.

Snape raised his wand and Dumbledore held up a hand. “Wait, Severus.”

The old wizard stepped forward, peering into the dark beyond the doors as a figure began to take shape in the rain. A low voice floated toward them, singing.  
  
_Etxera joango gara,_

_Etxera joango gara,_  
  
Snape felt a chill at the haunting melody which rebounded from dungeons to towers like an anthem. Even Albus looked disturbed, and Snape was glad for it. He despised being the only voice of reason.

The figure had reached the steps now and Severus waited, with his wand ready and any number of dark curses filling his head, eager to be flung at this trespasser. The shambling creature paused as it put a foot on the first step. The body shuddered, corpse like, and the eerie song broke with a wracking sob as the stranger pushed up the stairs and into the light of the hall.

Instead of the rotting remains of some necromantic experiment that Snape had prepared for, they were faced with a ... man. He was soaked from head to toe, and dressed in black and brown leathers. His face was narrow with wild dark hair dripping in ragged ends about his chin and dazed black eyes.

Dumbledore stepped forward, his hands open in a peaceful gesture. “Welcome to Hogwarts, may we--”

But he didn't get to finish, because as soon as the name Hogwarts left his mouth the stranger smiled like the stars had come out, and then collapsed face first on the floor.

~

  
Salazar woke up warm. He had not been warm in such a long time. How long he couldn't say. His mind shied away from thinking of it and focused on more earthly things. His body ached, his heart beat weakly and even the tips of his fingers hurt. The smell of medicinal potions filled his nose, and for a moment dread filled his waking mind, but he did not detect the stench of plague or the dour sound of chanting. So he let himself relax, assured that he was not in a christian temple, with those destined to be carried off by death.

He blinked, taking in the soft flicker of a candle dancing on the table beside him, before letting them slide shut again. He sighed, enjoying the feel of a goose-down mattress and heavy blankets. A wealthy home, perhaps the fortress of some lord bound in favor to Godric. He twitched. That didn't feel right.

Perhaps he was at Hogwarts. Yes, that was it. He could feel the stones of his school breathing around him. He'd been on his way here, he remembered. The weariness of travel had muddled his mind but he clearly recalled going up the steps of his home, entering the great hall, and then... well, somehow he must have gotten to his bed.

It felt so good to be home and he was drifting back to sleep when he heard a rustle of cloth and the scrape of turning parchment. He frowned. That was odd. He didn't allow anyone in his private chambers. He disliked being interrupted and put bars on the door. There should be no one nearby. He opened his eyes with effort and looked up, expecting to see Helga bustling around in her fearsome way.

Instead he found an old man sitting comfortably in a chair and reading a book with a burning-glass over each eye. The lens's were wrapped in wire frames and hung from his nose and ears. It was an ingenious contraption, actually, and Salazar was momentarily distracted by the construction of it.

Perhaps the man was an artificer. He must be new. Salazar knew every face in Hogwarts, and he would remember a grey-beard in purple robes. Rowena had been looking for a crafter and they said the monks of Lindisfarne once used a lens to copy fine details in their books. Before they all died by the Northmen's axe that is. None of that explained why the man was in Salazar's chamber.

Then Salazar looked around and stiffened, because he was not in his chamber after all. Rather he'd been put up in a small room facing east. The sun was peaking over the horizon beyond an arcade of windows. Outside he could see the Black Lake, and the completed north-east tower. Odd that. He would have sworn it was still under construction.

He turned with a thoughtful frown, seeing his cloak hanging from a peg by the door and his clothes folded on a table with the contents of his pockets laid out beside them. As if they'd been inspected. He bristled and narrowed his eyes at the old man. Perhaps sensing his displeased glower, the man looked up, and then smiled benignly at Salazar before he started speaking jibberish.

Salazar struggled up on one elbow, noting with unease how weak he felt, and his heart gave a feeble skip when he moved. He listened, calculating, as the old man babbled on. Salazar had traveled widely and considered himself a learned man, but this wizard had the most bizarre language he'd ever heard. After a good while he finally picked out some common roots and laid a hand over his eyes in exhaustion, muttering “Sugaar take all dim-witted Saxon's.”

For Saxon it was, more or less, with mutilated latin and other words he couldn't place. He supposed it would have been too simple if the man spoke greek like an educated wizard. How in Aker's name did this man come to be resting his heels in Salazar's school as if he owned the place? Surely even Rowena would have kept him in the kitchens or the herb garden.

Salazar was considering sending the man away with a light hex and calling for Helga, when the older wizard pulled a stick of elder wood from his sleeve and waved it about. There was a brief swell of magic and the next moment he spoke in perfectly understandable Euskara, which was Salazar's favorite tongue, being his first.

“There, I believe that will make things easier."

Salazar's jaw dropped and a shiver wracked him. The words hung between them with that familiar cadence of his childhood and he wondered for a moment if the old man was Euskaldunak, one of his own people, but another look at his face told Salazar that no, this man was not one of his. Not even close. It was only a spell. If a very clever one.

"How are you feeling dear boy,” the old man asked with a kindly smile, which Salazar ignored, focusing instead on the shape of the spell the man had cast and fixing it in his mind for the future. He would keep that one.

“Who are you?” He demanded bluntly, when he was done.

“Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts at your service.”

“A Master...” Salazar frowned. “Where is Rowena?”

“Mmmm.” The old wizard hummed and steepled his fingers in thought before plowing ahead without answering. “Can you tell me your name?”

Salazar scowled. His weakened state was making him short tempered. If this man was practicing at Hogwarts as some master of the craft, then he should know Salazar and show some respect. He pushed himself into a sitting position, wincing as he did so, and swung his legs over the side of the bed with a shaky breath. The linen shift he wore fell to his ankles as he stood and placed a hand on the bedside table. Gripping that support he made his way to his possessions and ran his fingers over them, counting them and searching for hidden tricks and mischief.

There was his bodkin and knives, still sharp, his casting bones, charcoal and sunstone. Helga said he had more in common with mag-pies then snakes with everything he liked to stuff away in his pockets. It seemed nothing had been tampered with, his tunic and cloak still smelled of rain and herbs and poisons. He turned to hide his hands from the old man and slowly drew his largest hunting knife from it's sheath, speaking to cover the small scrape of steel on leather.

“If Rowena is traveling again then fetch Helga,” he ordered, keeping a wary eye open for spells. “Or Godric if you must. I feel like killing something,” he muttered under his breath, thinking of the Red Lord. Being in a killing mood was the best way to deal with Godric, and Salazar had a lump of anger in his throat which he was sure Godric was responsible for... somehow.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” The old wizard said slowly, as if he wasn't sure how his words would be taken. It wasn't well. Salazar snarled and spun around, putting his blade to the wizened man's throat and cutting off some of his bushy beard.

“Do not test me, old man,” Salazar warned, glaring down at the wizard and his ostentatious robes. Purple, what a color to wear. Salazar did not like royalty and cared even less for those who styled themselves after kings. He barely tolerated Godric's airs, and that man was a friend. “Rowena may give you some leeway because of your age, but this is _my_ school. Now find me Helga.”

The master did not tremble, though Salazar was leaning over him. This was partly to make clear his readiness to do murder, no matter what protection the fool had from Rowena, and partly because he was unsteady on his feet and needed to lean on the chair, but the old man's eyes only softened and looked at Salazar with watery pity.

He laid a frail, warm hand on Salazar’s wrist. Not to push the blade away, but as if he was trying to offer comfort. Salazar shivered, dread beginning to mix with the anger in his belly. Why pity the man about to slit your throat? What did he know, that Salazar was missing? 

“My dear boy. Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Godric Gryffindor have all been dead for a very long time.”

“You’re lying,” Salazar croaked instantly. Though his grip on the knife began to shake.

“No. Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago.”

A thousand years... Salazar felt faint. He searched the man's face, then dove beneath his eyes searching for lies. The old wizard's mind was placid and deep, full of mysterious currents, but on this issue it held only pity. Salazar stumbled back, staring at this specter of the future which sat in his castle, heralding death. The room started to spin and the knife fell from his loosened grip, landing on the rug with a dull thunk.

“That is not possible,” he whispered desperately. Oh how smug would Godric be when he heard Salazar had finally uttered those words. 'Ha-ha, someday, my friend you will find something that is impossible even for you,' the Red Lord had laughed, and bet him a whole chicken that Salazar would admit this before he died.

Died like Godric.

Godric was dead?

“This is a trick,” Salazar hissed, grabbing at the bedpost, refusing to lose his feet and collapse before this strange old man. He reached out for Hogwarts, to find his friends and his children. The castle was humming and filled with people, as busy as a market quarter in Cordoba, but of Godric, Rowena, and Helga there was not a whisper. In fact, he could not recognize a single soul in Hogwarts welcoming walls.

He tried to push his senses further. Perhaps they were in the forest or the hills beyond, but he couldn't reach that far, and a part of him knew that even if he could, he wouldn't find them. Because the old man hadn't lied. They were not here anymore.

His heart stuttered and his magic failed him as terrible memories arose, threatening his sanity. His feet throbbed with a terrible phantom pain. He had been thrown away, like some spoiled lordling's toy. Banished by the man he'd loved and called a friend, and tossed so far beyond the known realms that it took him a millennia to return. A thousand years of walking, with the light of Hogwarts as his only guiding star.

Salazar gave up on dignity, and screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything became vague after that. Salazar thought he might have gone a little mad and he was sure his heart gave out at some point, because he recalled being put on his back while hands pressed on his chest and sent shocks of magic through his body, until his heart picked up the rhythm and started beating again.

He was bundled back into bed like a sick child, and poked and prodded until he finally escaped into sleep. He faded in and out for a long time. It was difficult to stay awake, or to tell what was real and what were memories. The bedchamber was hazy, and the smoke from candles and potion pots made him see strange echoes.

He knew he had been awake for all that time he walked in starlight and yet that too felt like a dream. He remembered the land shifting around him like ink on the water. He remembered dark, windless planes and the distorted faces of creatures made from smoke and light. Sometimes he had not been able to walk at all, but had crawled hand over hand, and the further he traveled the more he lost. What had once been a deep well of magic inside of him now felt as dry and brittle as dead grass.

Strangers came and went. Sometimes they peered over him and poured odd brews down his throat. Often he saw a woman with a long apron, and another man with a scowling face who smelled like Moondew and Helebore. They fluttered around him like bats while Salazar struggled to keep his eyes open.

When he finally woke properly again, Salazar was calmer. He felt muffled. His anger and the panic were still there, but far away, and he could not quite reach them. Nor could he summon any will to protest the feeling. It was rather nice.

He was laid out in bed with warm blankets around his waist and his left arm was held in someone's grip. Their fingers were on his wrist and a low voice was muttering at his side. Something about excess and meddling, and people who did not know what was good for them. Salazar licked his lips, and picked up a strange taste on his mouth.

“What did you give me?” he asked in a voice that sounded like knuckle bones on the hearth, rattling and raw.

There was a pause, and then a low, smooth voice that was very different from the grey-beard's answered him. “A calming potion. One of my own design.”

Salazar nodded briefly, not bothering to open his eyes yet. “It is very good,” he complimented absently. “I think I should still be screaming, but I cannot seem to feel much at all.” In fact the only thing he could feel was dull mortification at his behavior, and a distant irritation at all this waking up and falling asleep and waking up again.

“Neither your heart or the rest of you can take more screaming,” the stranger replied, sounding irritated and setting Salazar's arm back on the bed before lightly touching his throat. Which now that he mentioned it felt uncomfortably sore.

“Yes, I seem to be making a habit of collapsing in fits,” Salazar coughed dryly. “Lucky for both of us then that I will be spared from misery a little while, and you from the sound of it. How long does it last, this potion of yours?”

“Twenty hours.”

“One day.” Salazar murmured to himself and then laughed. “One day!”

His laughter grew a hysterical edge to it and he soon found his breath catching while one of the man's hand's pressed on his heart, as if he could hold the organ in place. The fingers smelled like oil and Valerian, and Salazar continued to choke. “So, I must make peace with losing a thousand years in a day. Because I think I will go mad trying to understand it without your lovely little potion. How does one grieve in a day? My friends and family are gone, and my children, and their children's children. Even the cities I loved must be dust. Rome, in all it's bloody glory, fell after seven hundred years. I... cannot even fathom the time that has passed without me.”

“If you need it,” the man said slowly. “We can continue administering the draught at this dose. However, it will become addictive, and I do not suggest becoming dependent on it.”

Salazar nodded weakly, then turned to rest his cheek on the cool pillow beneath him and finally opened his eyes.

The man at his bedside was tall and lean, with a hooked nose and robes dyed a deep, impressive black.

“Are you a physician?” he managed to ask, hoping this man had better training then those hedge witches and blood-letters who buzzed around settlements like flies.

“No, my lord. I am a potions master.”

“Ah,”

Salazar looked around, wondering how much time had passed since he collapsed in hysterics. The candles had all been lit. The bed he lay in was wide and deep, with white covers soft to the touch. Four carved wooden posts held a canopy of embroidered stars above his head. Looking at them made him dizzy and he turned away, taking in the large hearth on the far wall with a fire burning high inside and filling the room with warm light. Outside the window the sky was dark and he could see a sliver of moon underneath the edge of the window.

He turned back to the man sitting on a stool beside his bed. 

“Why do you call me lord?” he asked.

The man blinked, looking down at him with a careful and aloof sort of dignity. He seemed to be searching for something to say, but before he could find it the door on the far wall creaked open the grey-bearded wizard, Dumbledore, came in.

“Ah Severus there you are, and our young friend is awake again at last.”

“Albus,” the man, Severus, greeted the old wizard with a nod and stood up. He began stoppering the bottles he'd laid out on a tray near the bed with a small pot and pestle and all the usual tools of the trade. Salazar watched him work, finding it easier follow the quick familiar movements of the man's hands, than to look at the eye-aching color's of Master Dumbledore's robes. Or at the old wizard's face which, rather churlishly he admitted to himself, Salazar did not want see right then. But old men, like time, were not put off so easily.

“How are you feeling, dear boy?”

“Well enough,” Salazar rasped. He felt like trampled cow shit, but he was not going to say that.

The door opened again and the woman with the apron appeared, carrying a stack of linen and more bottles. She bustled in and handed her burdens to the potioner, Severus, and when she turned and Salazar got a better look at her, he went as still as snake in the grass.

She was old, though not as ancient as Master Dumbledore. Her face was round and healthy with delicate wrinkles around the eyes, but what caught him was the long white wimple she wore over her head and shoulders. When she approached the bed, Salazar leapt back. Or tried to. He was weak and did not make it more than a hands breath or two across the bed, but she stopped anyway, looking as if he had just stunned her.

“I believe some introductions are in order!” Dumbledore's ever banal voice broke in.

“I know who you are, old man. My memory is not so poor I cannot recall that.” Salazar hissed, not taking his eyes off the woman, or her wimple.

“Very good to hear,” the old man's eyes twinkled. “Than I shall skip myself and move onto more interesting persons. This is Madame Poppy Pomfrey, our esteemed medi-witch.”

“A witch?” Salazar gaped, his heart racing at an uncomfortable pace. “_You_ are a witch?”

“I am,” she answered softly.

Salazar still did not move, white knuckling the bed covers.

It was not unheard of. Not entirely. There were stories about Morgan, one of the Saxon's most infamous witches growing up in a nunnery. Many girls were sent to nunneries. Many people took the cross in name only and let the Christians dunk them in rivers, simply so they could make their way in the world a little easier. Jokin had been like that, but he and Salazar had always kept up the old ways and Salazar never pretended to convert. Which gave poor Jokin more then a few white hairs.

This Mistress Pomfrey might be a witch. Though he could not see why she would wear a wimple among her own kind if she was. It was on the tip of his tongue to demand she prove herself. Because if she was not a witch, if she really held the church's beliefs in her heart, then even if she could cast she would refuse to. He had never met a nun who would put their magical talent above their Christian soul or the church's doctrine. In their minds to cast a spell would be to damn themselves to hell.

Meanwhile, Master Dumbledore was still chattering blithely away as Salazar's panic strained against whatever calming potion he had been drugged with.

“And of course you have met Severus, Professor Snape, our Potions Master and head of Slytherin house.”

“My house?” Salazar choked, so startled by this that he lost his deathlike grip on the bed covers and his viper stare on the white wimple. “You are of _my_ house?”

Severus looked down at him with a skeptical glower. “If it _is_ your house. If you are who you claim to be, and really did fall through time. _If_ Lord Salazar Slytherin has returned.”

“I am no lord. Nor am I am a child, or a simpleton. I did not trip over some root in the woods and fall through the veils!” Salazar shot back. “I was cursed.” 

“Of course,” Severus replied smoothly, and Salazar had to admire the man's composure. He seemed determined to remained inoffensive, despite his obvious disbelief. Likely so he could survive just in case he was wrong and Salazar was proven right.

“And this,” Master Dumbledore waved behind them as another woman entered the room. A tall, elderly witch with a no nonsense sort of face and a very pointed hat. “Is our esteemed Deputy Head Mistress Minerva McGonagall, head of Gryffindor house.”

Salazar was suddenly feeling very crowded.

“Do you have more of that draught?” he asked Master Snape.

Severus's severe look twitched with what might have been a smile. “No, my lord. I would not recommend it at this time.”

“I should think not!” The wimple woman, Pomfrey, declared.

Salazar sighed and dropped back onto the covers, finding that even a mundane panic could not linger long under the effects of Severus's magic potion. The fear was already fading, leaving him shaky in its wake, though his mistrust he was glad to discover, had as much staying power as ever.

“You may call me Salazar. Only Godric had a title, or any land to his name beyond Hogwarts.”

“Yes, my lord,” Severus bowed his head and Salazar glowered at the man. He had such a smooth tone that without knowing him better Salazar could not say if he was deliberately mocking him, or if he was merely being cautious. He reminded Salazar of the vassals who oozed about, unsure of their footing in the looming reign of a new king. Salazar considered him with narrowed eyes. This one, he thought, was clever and would bear watching.

“You must forgive our ignorance,” Dumbledore said. “We know very little of the Founder's era anymore. There are a few artifacts from that time, but most of their history has passed into legend and myth, much like Merlin himself.”

“I see,” Salazar winced. He was not real to these people, anymore than they were to him. He was just a story now, and that was remarkable enough. It was not as if he had been paying anyone to sing his praises, and bards must sing for their supper. Usually to lords who wanted to sound more glorious than they were.

“Are you his master?” he asked Dumbledore, and gestured at Severus, who stiffened.

“I have no master,” Severus answered sharply. “Dumbledore is the Headmaster.” Salazar levered an irritated look at his nurse and to his credit Severus caught on fairly quickly, adding “He runs the school.” When Salazar continued to look at him blankly he cleared his throat and tried again. “He manages it, controls it.”

“Does he now,” Salazar muttered, looking the old man up and down, and feeling a burn in his heart at the idea. “And what control do _you_ have, over _my_ castle?”

“As the Headmaster I have the power to hire staff, or let them go. I oversee the teachers and school curriculum and defenses. I must organize repairs and supplies for the school, as well as the funds. The money. I am also tied to the wards and magic Hogwarts. The position of Headmaster has many duties.”

“Since your arrival,” Severus broke in, sneering in an irritated way and looking pointedly at the old man while Dumbledore smiled through his beard. “He's mostly been making unbelievable excuses about why the castle nearly collapsed, soothing egos at the ministry, and building wards on this room that rival protections in Gringotts.”

“Mmm,” Salazar did not understand much of that. He did not know what a Gringotts was, though he gathered that master Dumbledore was beholden to some sort of council. “You are hiding me then? You do not wish to tell this 'ministry' or the children that I am here?”

“Oh, we thought it would make things easier,” the wimple witch, Mistress Pomfrey spoke up. “I imagine the students will find out soon enough, nothing stays secret at Hogwarts for long but we'll ask the staff to keep quiet until we know more about your, erm... circumstances. Whatever time you need to recover the Headmaster and I will do our best to provide.”

“Mmmm” he hummed bitterly. “Somehow I do not think one recovers from a thousand years as easily as they overcome a chill, or a bit of gas. Or are you hoping that if you keep me fed and watered and under guard, that after a few days time will catch up with me and everything will go back to the way it was? We should all be so lucky,” he whispered the last, mostly to himself.

“I never thought I would be standing here listening to Salazar Slytherin feeling sorry himself,” the old witch, McGonagall, huffed and looked down at him with what would have been a terrifying expression if he had still been child.

“When you have lost your world, mistress, then we can discuss who has a right to 'feel sorry',” he replied simply.

“Be that as it may,” the old witch said, as no nonsense as ever. “You are here now. We will deal with it,” and her voice softened a little, something like pity in her eyes. “So must you.”

“In any case,” Pomfrey said, carefully stepping around the other witch with linens in hand. “Time seems content to treat you the same as the rest of us. You're certainly not getting any older then you should be. As far I can tell you are a very ordinary thirty two year old man, who has been pushed beyond some extra ordinary limits.”

She stepped closer, slowly, and this time Salazar did not have the strength to pull back, or much a will to. He lay still, tired beyond body and spirit, as she carefully sat on the bed.

“I would like to look at you. Will you allow me?”

“I cannot stop you,” he rasped.

Mistress Pomfrey looked sad. “That's not what I asked."

Salazar said nothing. He waited, and so did she. He expected her to get on with it after a time, after the show of concern had been made, but she just sat with him. The candles flickered, Dumbledore and the others drifted to the far side of the room. She still did not move, and it became clear that she had no intention of “looking” at him until he gave her leave, but that she would not leave either. If he wanted to be awake for this then he had better let her get it done. So he finally sighed and nodded at her.

“Well then,” she smiled, and strangely it reminded Salazar of his grandmother. “Let's get you up.”

With Pomfrey's help Salazar got himself sitting upright on the bed. Though he wavered once he was there.

“I was not like this the last time I woke.”

“It's the potions,” Severus replied, returning to his tray of bottles and unguents. “You'll feel dizzy for awhile. It will pass.”

Salazar nodded and let his head drop with his hair falling over his face, while Mistress Pomfrey ran her hands and a stick of wood over his back, his head, and his chest. Then she urged him to turn and swing his legs around, and once his feet were on the floor she examined those too. She tisked at something she saw, or felt. Salazar didn't know what. If he thought about it he could still feel the ache of walking through that endless starlit place, and decided he did not want to look at his feet. 

Dumbledore was still talking softly with McGonagall in a corner. Salazar was grateful for the courtesy at least. It made him feel less hemmed in while Pomfrey began wrapping warm linen, soaked in something that smelled like Mugwart, around each foot.

“Almost done,” Pomfrey pulled back and settled on a stool in front him, then took his head gently in her hands. “May I?” she asked.

He did not understand at first, he was very tired, but then he felt her behind his eyes as soft and easy as the change in air on a cool morning. He smiled then, more warmed by that familiar touch then he had been by the compresses or covers or candles. He nodded, and she stepped lightly into his mind.

She was... not clumsy exactly, but easily blown one way and then another. He was not sure if she was unable to direct her own course, or if being tossed about on his thoughts was her way of divining his mood. He let her go, watching as she felt around his mind like a healer testing a limb for green rot or inflammation.

He tried to think of simple things for her. The fierce red glow of Godric's hair in the firelight, and the way his mouth curved when he grinned. Or the brutal shape of his beard when he scowled. The hard calluses on his hands. The sound of his laugh. The way his nose felt against the back of Salazar's neck. The sight of him on a horse, sword in hand and roaring with that ridiculous hat on his head.

He thought of Helga covered in mud up to the elbows, with grime streaked across her face like war paint. The way she heaved stones on her shoulders, or swung a sword. The flaxen yellow of her hair dressed with twine and bones and badger claws. The curve of her shoulder in the water and the smell of her when she came out of the lake.

He thought of Rowena, always elegant, bent over her books and delicately scratching at a vellum page with a dark quill in hand. The flutter of Arcturus, her eagle, perched nearby with his keen eye looking for mice and mysteries. Her kohl rimmed eyes, and her fingers blackened with ink and potions. His own hand threading through her long dark hair. She always wore it loose.

He remembered the furs he had left laying on the floor in the Winter Room, the sound of children whispering, laughing... and then screaming. That boy with the big ears looking up at Salazar with blood bubbling on his lips as the light left his eyes. The girl's faces drawn with horror when he told them to run. The rain. The cold. The black blistering rage of it all. The look in Godric's eyes when he threw Salazar down the steps of their home and his curse took hold.

“Enough,” he wheezed, steering away from the sore memory of that night. All Mistress Pomfrey needed to know was that his mind was whole. She did not need the dirt and blood and ignominy that proved it. Some things were private, and for him pain had always been one of them.

He pulled his head back and Pomfrey let her hands drop. She was looking pale and a little upset and turned to share a look with Master Dumbledore.

Salazar cleared his throat. “Well? Are you satisfied that I am not about to fly apart before your eyes?”

There was a long pause, which was not reassuring, but eventually Pomfrey made some noise about resting and eating and it all sounded like what his mother used to say when she did not know what to give someone for their pains and could not get away with a lie and a bottle of horse dung. Salazar nodded along anyway and tried to look gullible, and when Pomfrey ran out of soothing nothings to say about his 'condition' he turned to Dumbledore.

“So then, you are the master of Hogwarts now. When did you come by the land?”

And did you pay for it? Or take it at the point of a wand and sword, he thought to himself. Though, perhaps that was unfair. Master Dumbledore might be a descendant of his. He had planned, they had all planned, for the castle to be passed down to their children, and their children's children and so on through time. That was what all Founders and Kings hoped for.

“Oh, I went to school here as boy, as did many others,” Dumbledore answered.

“That _cannot_ be the rule of succession,” Salazar groaned in disbelief. There would be no end of claims and he had heard of the bloody wars that erupted among Franks when too many sons from too many marriages all demanded their cut of the land. He had never wanted that for Hogwarts.

“Oh no, there is no line of succession.”

Salazar blinked, confused. “But it is yours now?”

“Yes... and no,” the old man demurred with a twinkle that made Salazar, in a very Godric like fashion, want to knock his teeth in.

“Hogwarts is owned by no-one,” Severus replied with an exasperated snap.

“Then who provides the army?” Salazar asked.

“There is no army.”

“This is a school!” Mistress Pomfrey looked horrified.

“Yes,” Salazar looked at her blankly. He did not understand her offense and his head was spinning from the potions and their strange speech.

He did not understand these people at all. How could the simplest things be so different? He could not even grasp the titles or positions of the four in front of him. A Headmaster seemed like a Lord and had many of the same the duties, yet Dumbledore was not a lord. He answered to some mysterious council and yet seemed independent of their will. Hogwarts stood, but belonged to no-one. Severus was a free man and a master of his craft, yet answered to Dumbledore. The only thing clear to Salazar was that Dumbledore was their leader.

But no army?

Every castle, every fortress, every town needed some force of arms. It was why he agreed to meet Godric when he first talked of building a castle to harbor and teach their kind with Rowena. The Red Lord was the son of a Mormaer. He had a force of a hundred at his command, and many of those knights knew magic. Though just as many did not.

The world was dangerous. Their weal turned on blood. Kings had been warring for land since before Salazar's grandmother was born, whether Saxon or Castille made no difference. Northmen still raided The Isles despite an alleged peace, some from the Danelaw Boroughs, but more from beyond the sea. Giants and trolls lived in the hills and grew hungry for flesh every winter. Dark creature's haunted the lake. Fire Worms lit up the fields, and Sugaar help you if you ever saw a Dragon. A village without any force of arms was sooner a graveyard then a home.

If they did not want to pay tribute to the King of Alba, or owe him fealty, then they must have an army of their own to defend their home or they would lose it. Those were their choices, however much he hated it, and oh how he had hated those swaggering men.

Who among their knights might have hung a girl for witchcraft when she refused to bed him, or worse, read a book? Which of them had drowned boys for using herbs to heal or for dancing around a tree? Which soldiers listened to the church when they called Salazar and his children heathens? Too often he'd seen the gleam of greed or bored, barely restrained violence in their eyes, or heard them whisper about devilry around their cups. To Salazar they were little better than the thugs and bandits they were meant to guard against.

He'd wanted to interrogate and dismiss the worst of them. The ones who liked murder and rape, and pillaging too well. Godric never let him. He said it would be an affront to their honor to even suggest such poor conduct. Godric certainly saw it as an affront to his _own_ honor when Salazar pointed at the less than honest men under his banner. Sometimes Godric reminded him of a Dragon, but rather then gold or pearls his friend coveted honor above all else. Godric was just and upright in his way. He always made plain his rules of war. If he caught any man robbing, raping or beating the innocent that wretch was dealt with harshly, but Godric could not be every-where, or see every thing, and he was too proud by half.

Salazar idly fingered the scar on his cheek where Godric's sword had cut him, then looked down at his hands. If they had not needed knights, what might have become of them? Salazar put aside the sheer impossibility of it and tried to think. What would a world without swords and shields and raiders and monstrous beasts look like? He could imagine taming the wild around them, he could even imagine a place without walls or armed men, but he knew there were some things about people that never changed, no matter how they lived or when.

“If it is true that you have no army...” he trailed off, thinking. Then what? The only real question was, “Then how do you fight? How do you war?”

All four of company in front of him opened their mouths, and then stopped at the same time as if the same thought had occurred to them and they were reconsidering their words. Salazar waited.

“I think perhaps that is a topic better left for another time.” Dumbledore finally said. “When we can all enjoy a much longer conversation and a bit a tea and candy. You look ragged my boy, and we don't want to undo Madame Pomfrey and Professors Snape's good work.”

The old man was not wrong. Salazar did feel ragged and he did not have the strength, or more importantly the patience, to drag explanations out of unwilling mouths. Maybe tomorrow, or in the few days, he would feel up to what was clearly going to be a linguistical exercise in pulling teeth. So Salazar let himself be distracted.

“What is tea and candy?” he asked with sigh.

“Ah!” Dumbledore's face lit up like he'd just seen a long promised shore. McGonagall was rolling her eyes while Pomfrey hid a smile and Severus looked suddenly sour. The Headmaster made a flourish with his hand and produced a small yellow... seed? Salazar cocked his head as the old man handed it to him with a twinkling eye.

“Is this poison?” he asked in his flattest tone.

Severus choked, and then quickly recovered himself and returned to looking as long suffering as ever.

“It is merely a tasty delight!” Dumbledore assured him and took the seed from Salazar's hand. He broke it in two with a whispered word and then handed one half back to him while the old man popped the other half in his own mouth.

Salazar looked at the seed suspiciously. It was hard and covered in a fine white grain. It smelled sweet and yet somehow unnatural. He did not eat it, but he did suck some of the powder off his thumb. It had a saccharine taste, as if all the sweetness had been extracted from a lump of honey and then ground into paste.

“Mmm, that is... strange.” He wasn't sure he liked it, but he wouldn't mind having it again. He sucked a bit more off his fingers.

“A little sugar can cure a host of ills.” Dumbledore looked very pleased. “If there's anything else we can--”

“Yes” Salazar's interrupted. “Where are their graves?”

“Graves?” Dumbledore looked puzzled.

“Godric, Helga, Rowena, where are they buried?” Salazar demanded. The long pause which followed told him more he wanted to know. It stretched and grew stale. “They _were_ buried,” he tried, a needy sound that he instantly disliked scraping his voice. “They _must_ have been.”

“I am sure they were,” Dumbledore raised a wrinkled hand and laid it on his shoulder in that same too gentle way. “But it has been--

“I know how long it has been!” Salazar snapped and stood with the help of the bedpost, shaking off the old man's touch.

“We no longer know where any tomb of the founders may be.” Dumbledore said sadly. “That knowledge, like much of their history, has simply been lost to time.”

Salazar closed his eyes in pain.

“Please leave,” he whispered and turned away from them all. A moment passed and then his company of nurses, and whatever Dumbledore and McGonagall were, all shuffled out the room with quiet respect.

There were other names he had planned to ask for, names even more dear than his companions. Izar and Helena, Sastra, Torben, Brun and Aiza, but what would be the point now? After all, if these modern wizards had forgotten so much that they did not know where Godric was buried, why would they know any more about the rest of them?

Just as the door was closing Dumbledore's voice came back to him.

“I will ask the grey lady. If she was ever going to speak I'm sure it would be for--” he paused, and Salazar felt a thousand cuts for a thousand years in that pause. “For family, but I cannot in good conscience encourage hope. Many scholars have come to Hogwarts seeking her spirit to ask about the founders, and their tombs would be the greatest find of an age, but she has never said a word.”

“Go,” Salazar commanded, voice raw.

The door closed softly and they finally left him alone. Salazar stood at a window streaked with hints of rain, looking out at the black sky and the far away moon. Then he dropped his forehead onto the cold glass and silently cried.


	3. Chapter 3

Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody, or rather, Barty Crouch Jr., stood in a corner of the staff room and watched the rest of Hogwarts' teachers file in. He regarded each one with a distrusting, baleful eye as they passed him. The good eye, the magic one that made his whole face itch and long for the day he could drop this excessive lard like body that he'd disguised himself in. It was disgustingly awkward to get around in. He missed his own lean frame and his tongue, and having two legs and two eyes, but all worship required sacrifice, and no-one knew that better then him. 

He had spent years in the cold and empty attic of his father's heart, like some Romantic wretch from those pathetic tales about little orphan boys. He'd survived on bread and cold water and his father's bloody pride. Oh yes, he knew about sacrifice. That was why his lord chose him. That was why he would have a place in his dark god's glorious empire, because he had shown faith and devotion in his lord's dark hour of the soul... or lack there of. Barty's lips twitched and he hid a smile behind a quick swig from his flask.

Come summer he could kiss his lord's feet and see the power and purity of the old ways reborn. Or at least that had been the plan. Now, he wasn't sure. A traitorous anxiety had fixed itself in his mind. He couldn't put it to rest and found himself wishing there was a lot more in his flask then Polyjuice.

The other night, while Dumbledore and his teachers had run about shoring up walls and beams and looking for weak stones while the castle shook, Barty had stayed behind in the Great Hall. Allegedly to guard it against collapse, but also to keep an eye the Goblet of Fire which had only been let out of its cage in the British Museum of Antiquities, Magical Department, for this extra special, once in life time, blink and you'll miss it tournament. They didn't want someone to, for example, take advantage of the distraction and slip something in, or worse, make off with the artifact entirely. No one wanted an international incident. Not yet. It wasn't part of the plan. 

Or at least, it hadn't been. He wasn't sure if there still was a plan now. 

He'd seen a fire burning in the Goblet. An impossible, terrifying light that bloomed out of the cup and filled the hall with the smell of burnt wood and a moaning wind and something... else. Something vast and arcane beyond his understanding. As if when the flames lit up the hall they'd illuminated the flip side of death, and every shadow became a mockery of the mortal world. Then a single name rose out of the cup, and from his place at the front of the hall he'd seen that thin, swaying figure appear at the doors. Oh yes, he had seen. 

Now Trelawney was sitting in a corner of the staff room moaning about the “tearing of the veils” and “spirits from the great beyond” and how they were all doomed. Nobody was paying much attention except for Barty, who was shaken and wanted to pull her jaw off. He looked down at his flask and scowled. 

This could be either very good or very bad and, when you thought about it, that just made this the same as any other day. So he might as well treat it like any other day, and what would he do if his faith in his dark lord's plans had not been rocked even a little bit? Wait, and listen, and report. 

After all the goody-goodies had said their piece here, he'd need to make his way down to Hogsmeade for a real drink.

The last of Hogwarts' staff wandered in and settled themselves on squishy couches, loading up with tea and biscuits while they chattered inanely, waiting for the Headmaster to make his entrance.

“Everything's out of order,” Septima Vector was grumbling. “The seventh floor staircase has fused to the wall and is refusing the budge, I can't get to my own classroom, and don't even get me started on the toilets, the whole plumbings been backed up. It's belching like a toad.”

“I really though the east tower would come down,” Bathsheba Babbling added with a shudder.

“Oh don't say that!” cried Burbage, the Muggle Studies professor. Barty rolled his lone eye. “Can you imagine if it had all fallen in? Or the dungeons?”

“The students were terrified.” Professor Sprout was shaking her head, the Puffapod on her hat bobbing in a comical way. “We had to bed everyone outside on the lawn. I didn't get a wink of sleep trying to keep them all line. I swear not even the full collapse of the castle would keep some of them from trying to kill each other.”

“Well I’m glad we can finally send the little monsters back to their own beds,” Vector groused. “It's all very nice for the Durmstrangs and Beauxbatons, staying on their ships and infinitely expandable carriages, but the rest of us can't be expected to spend the rest of term in a tent. However good the warming charms are.”

“It's really about time we had someone look at the foundations don't you think?” Burbage leaned in.

“They'd have to find them first,” Madame Hooch said, looking a little rougher then usual, and still in yesterdays coat with a tight grip on a steaming cup that Barty suspected had an extra little something in it. 

“Have any of you seen the Goblet?” Flitwick piped up. “Very funny. Something about the other night set that awry too. It's gone completely out.”

“I thought it never went out!” McGonagall looked alarmed.

“Aye,” Hagrid, shifted on a bench, which groaned ominously under him and collected a layer of dried mud from the half giant's coat. “Isn't that why its called the Goblet of Fire? Because, yeh know, it's on fire?”

“Did it give any names for the tournament?” Hooch asked Flitwick, ignoring Hagrid completely.

“I wasn't close enough to see.” Flitwick shrugged 

“Damnedest thing.”

“How are the students taking things?” Burbage asked. “I've been so busy helping poor Filch I haven't seen any of them since that night.”

“Oh the Ravenclaws are fine,” Flitwick waved, looking proud. “You would think this is just one more school adventure to write home about for them. They're coming up with a world of explanations.” 

“My favorite is the rumor all that the shaking is due to the Weasley twins pulling a prank.” Sprout laughed, rocking in her seat. “Apparently they were telling ghost stories, and some of the children have decided the boys wanted dramatic effects.”

McGonagall looked irritated. Snape, who'd been lurking in a corner next to a harried looking Madame Pomfrey wearing an expression that suggested he wished he was anywhere else, took the opportunity to sneer.

“They think a dundering pair of red headed clods made a thousand year old castle shake to its foundations?” 

“Delightful how young minds work, isn't it?” The headmaster said, choosing that moment to walk in like it was any other day, wearing vibrant pink and green robes with lace doily cuffs. 

Laughter floated around the room and Barty snorted. Snape cast him a sharp look and he made sure to catch the other man's eye only with his magic one. He'd hear rumors about Snape knowing that slippery mind magic, but even he couldn't get anything out of a glass eye.

“Only if they grow out of it,” Snape shot back at Dumbledore. “Which in my experience few of them ever will.” 

Dumbledore merely smiled and then nodded at everyone who greeted him, and took his place at the top of the room. Conversation slowly dropped to a murmur and then silence, and he waved at the assembled staff. 

“Thank you all for coming. I know you all have a great deal to do in light of the extraordinary Halloween we've all had, and I won't take much of your time. Now, first, I would like to extend my compliments to you all, and especially to Mr. Filch and Hagrid for their work soothing the castle back into place... more or less.” A smattering of halfhearted applause followed this. “Secondly, I have spoken with Mr. Crouch and he has conferred with the Minister, and the decision has been made to proceed with the Tri-Wizard Tournament as planned.” 

“What? With all this upset?” Bathsheba cried.

“Told you,” Hooch muttered into her cup.

“But--”

“I'd like to see you tell those Durmstrangs the tournaments off,” Hooch said and kicked up her heels on a stool.

“We can't exactly send them packing right after they've arrived, can we?” Sprout added.

“I don't see why not.” Bathsheba sniffed her tea. “They certainly don't look happy to be here. Those Beauxbaton's have been snickering behind their hands about 'passé' architecture and castles being old fashioned death traps since the ceiling started shaking.”

“Well--”

“I see death!” Trelawney wailed suddenly, affecting a fainting pose and draping a gauzy shawl over her head. “Spirits returned from the great beyond! Dark curses, a Triadic Tragedy for our champions!” 

Everyone ignored her. 

“I'm afraid Madame Hooch is correct,” Dumbledore said with a smile at the games mistress. “Agreements have been made that can't be broken. Not by a little inclement weather. So we will simply have to make do and I see no reason why the tournament shouldn't proceed. More to the point, Mr Crouch and Minister Fudge don't see that.”

“I can think of few reasons,” Vector muttered.

“Albus,” Flitwick set aside his cup, looking very serious. “Do you have any idea why the castle picked up its foundations and danced around like a Pixie on string?”

Dumbledore quietly sipped his tea. “Not yet.”

“Well, I suppose we'll have to light Goblet again,” Flitwick sighed.

“Can we?” Pomona Sprout asked.

Flitwick shrugged. “No idea.” 

“I am sure we can convince it to light again, if we act quickly,” Dumbledore assured them. “In ancient times it was said to burn for a week. Mr Crouch has had his head in the fire with the director of antiquities since the shaking stopped, and the director has assured us that all it needs are some stones and ashes and a few other little things.”

“And if it doesn't work?”

Dumbledore shrugged. “If we cannot light the cup by tomorrow we'll simply have to hope our guests will accept a panel of judges to choose our champions.” 

“Not likely,” Madam Hooch snorted.

“Albus,” Flitwick rubbed at his head. “The only reason the tournament was revived and Durmstrang agreed to participate was the promise of that Goblet's absolute neutrality, and untamperable power. They're more likely to sail for home, and leave us with the Beauxbatons and an international incident.” 

“What a shame,” Snape deadpanned from his corner. 

Barty glared at the potions master, imagining the writhing pit of trouble he would be in with his master if the tournament disbanded. It wasn't a pretty picture.

“Well then, my dear Professor Flitwick,” Dumbledore smiled “Perhaps you would be so good as to reassure our guests, Madame Maxine and Mr Karkoroff of our commitment to the tournament and give them our assurances, along with Mr Crouch's of course, that it will continue as planned? And convey our apologies that students will have to resubmit their names for the contest?”

“Yes, Albus,” Flitwick sighed, looking like a student who wished they'd hadn't spoken up. Barty didn't envy him.

“Well, I think that's everything,” Dumbledore said and clapped his hands. “We'll resume classes as normal tomorrow, and I hope everyone will be forgiving with their students work,” he sent Snape a look over his spectacles. “After all, it is very difficult to write an essay in the dirt without use of a quill.”

Snape's expression puckered. 

The staff meeting quickly broke up after that. Cups and saucers were left rattling in trays and plates of biscuits disappeared up sleeves and into robes, leaving only crumbs behind as the teachers slowly made their way out. Barty got ready to follow them, and was already wondering if he could take the opportunity to nip down to Hogsmeade before classes officially started again, when Dumbledore called out.

“Alastor, Pomona, Filius. Would you mind staying for a moment?”

Barty stopped in his tracks and turned back around, sensing an opportunity of a different kind. Maybe Dumbledore was finally going give some explanation about what they'd seen the other night. The part that wasn't just an autumn storm. The part with body on the steps and the fire in the hall. 

Barty waited until the last teacher had left the room. Then quietly shut the door behind them and turned to face the Headmaster and his highest staff. All the heads of houses were there, and he noted Matron Pomfrey had stayed as well. That was interesting.

“What is it Albus,” Sprout sounded nervous, and Flitwick looked curious.

“As some of you know,” Dumbledore nodded at them. “A new guest arrived at our door the other night.”

“What? When?” Sprout looked puzzled. “I thought all the Tournament guests arrived the day before? Who else would be coming?”

“You weren't expecting anyone, were you Albus?” Flitwick asked sharply.

“I was not. A stranger appeared during the storm. Our visitor,” Dumbledore continued before they could speak up. “Is a young man who traveled a long way and is very sick, and very tired. He is no danger to the school, or our students, nor does he wish anyone here any ill. Madame Pomfrey has assured me that he is too weak to be moved, so I have extended our hospitality.”

“Albus!” Sprout admonished, aghast.

“You think this man has something to do with the shaking, don't you Albus.” Flitwick gave the older wizard a shrewd look.

Dumbledore nodded. “I'm certain of it.”

“Who is he?” Flitwick asked.

“That is what I'd like to discuss.”

“I don't see it matters who he is,” Sprout protested. “We can't have a strange man walking about the school. What about the students?”

“And their parents,” Snape added with the gloomy look of someone who felt parents were worse then flesh eating beetles.

“And what if the castle starts shaking again? If he's ill, will he even be able to get out? Shouldn't he be in Saint Mungos?” Sprout pressed.

Dumbledore raised his hands and then liberally served out candies to pacify his staff. Little lemon drops and pepper imps danced around the air like so many flies and Barty swatted one, leaving a smear of sugar on the wall. 

“We will keep an eye on him, naturally,” Dumbledore assured them all. “Should anything change then we'll make arrangements, but for now what he needs is peace and rest, and I don't believe we can risk sending him to Saint Mungos.”

That startled both Sprout and Flitwick.

“Why not?” They said, almost simultaneously.

Dumbledore sighed and turned to look up at Barty.

“Moody, you were in the hall last night, weren't you?” The Headmaster asked with weary eyes.

“Aye,” Barty cautiously admitted. “I was keeping an eye on that roof, didn't want it coming down on us with that sort of enchantment. Figured it might have torn something and you don't want bits of illusion floating around like rubbish.”

“Did you see anything ... unusual?”

“More unusual then a castle shaking itself like a wet hog and a body on the front step?” Barty asked. 

He thought about lying, but Dumbledore knew he was there and anyone could have seen that light burning through the hall windows. He had to remain above suspicion here and if Dumbledore had really spoken to the man who appeared in the storm, there'd be no point in hiding it anyway. Whatever his lord and master planned next he would need Barty here, to see it carried through.

“Aye, Albus,” the name fell off his tongue like coal. “Your Goblet of Fire started throwing up flame like it would set the whole hall ablaze. Then just before the doors started banging a name came out of the fire. Just one name.” He whispered with reverence. “Salazar Slytherin.”

Sprout spilled her tea. Flitwick choked on his biscuit. Dumbledore looked solemn, but unsurprised. _He knows_, thought Barty with a shiver. 

Oh lord, can it be true? It wasn't possible... but if it was? How did he parse his faith with that? Of course if Slytherin had returned it would be at his lord's will, or rather, his lord was working Slytherin's will. It must be. The alternative ... frankly made his head hurt.

“The Goblet went out after that, like someone gone and snuffed it,” Barty finished.

“Thank you, Moody, if you wouldn't mind I'd like to keep this between us for now.” Dumbledore looked around at Snape, Flitwick, Sprout, Pomfrey and McGonagall. After a few hushed murmurs the small circle of Heads all nodded, agreeing to keep their “guest” a secret for now. Barty gave his word with them but,

“I'll keep my mouth shut, but it won't be long before it comes out, Albus.” Barty told the old man. “These things always do.”

Dumbledore nodded, looking tired and surprisingly old.

“Yes, I know.”

“You can't really _believe_ that man is Salazar Slytherin,” Snape spat.

“Don’t you?” Dumbledore looked up, curious.

“I think it's more likely he's insane.” 

“Poppy?” Dumbledore turned to the Matron.

“Well I'm a bit out of my depth here Albus. I really need an expert. He certainly believes what he's told us, and he has memories of it.” She sounded a bit awed saying that.

Snape scoffed. “Memories can be made, if you know what you're doing. He can believe it all he likes, that doesn’t make it true.”

Pomfrey looked unsure. “Nothing I saw in him looked made up.”

“Of course not,” Snape sneered. “You don't give some idiot a memory that's obviously false if you want them to believe it. Unless driving them mad is the point.” He cleared his throat. “There were rumors, years ago, of dark workings and torture gone wrong. Or right, depending on your point of view. Victim's minds were made into a playground of illusions. One moment they'd believe they were a worm, the next that they were Merlin himself, until nothing was real and they snapped. All that was left were gibbering, drooling remnants of themselves.”

Silence fell over the room. Only the scrape of a spoon or the tick of the nearby clock broke the heavy stillness. Barty licked his lips, thinking back with pleasure on the Longbottoms and the Barnetts and sweet Doris Padmore. Oh what fun he'd had in those days. 

“Who would do such a thing?” Sprout looked sick. So did everyone else, except Snape who was as unreadable as ever. 

“Voldemort,” Flitwick said. 

“No.” Snape shook his head. “None of his old crowd would do this.” 

“It seems exactly like something they'd do, if you ask me,” Flitwick bristled.

“Oh don't mistake me, they'd turn some clod's head inside out until he believed he was Godric Gryffindor and think it was a great joke, but not Slytherin. It would be an insult to his memory and his legacy. It would be unthinkable. To a Death Eater, Salazar Slytherin is not just a legend or a cause, he is a god.”

“I agree,” Barty hissed with more truth and fervor then they would ever realize. Then he slid back into his role and started lying. “Its more likely this was a follower of the Dark Lord and someone thought it'd be a fitting revenge having him think he was a Founder he used to worship.”

“Moody!”

“You can't be serious!”

“As a heart attack.” Barty smirked with sly assurance. “Some Ministry muck-a-dee-muck could've decided to take him out of Azkaban for a bit of personal justice. It's happened before.” 

This shocked most of the room and Flitwick, Pomfrey and Sprout all fell into vociferous denials, while Snape and Dumbledore watched and McGonagall took control of the room, shaking her wand and ordering them to quiet down.

“Albus, what do you think?” McGonagall finally turned to the headmaster when the shouting stopped.

“Our guest may be mad,” Dumbledore allowed. “But I’m not sure we can say the same for the Goblet.”

“The Goblet!” Mcgonagall gasped. “Oh Merlin, do you think that man has been contracted for the tournament somehow?”

“I don’t know,” Dumbledore admitted softly. “I think that is something we'll have to ask him.” 

An uncomfortable pause followed this. It was never heartening when your master admitted ignorance. Particularly when that master was Albus Dumbledore, who was legendary for having plans within plans, and endless tricks and intelligence up his frilly sleeves. 

“But not today I think.” The Headmaster stood with finality. “Our guest, whoever he may be, has been through a great ordeal and we have a tournament to put on and a school to run.” 

“And plumbing to fix,” Sprout sighed. 

The meeting dissolved. No one had any particular idea what to do about their new guest, or to say about him. Except for Pomfrey who was adamant he “not be disturbed.” Barty wondered what they would all do when Salazar Slytherin was no longer weak or sick or content to remain where they put him. 

There was some awkward shuffling and a few whispered excuses about “classes you know,” and “getting on with things.” Then they all left, leaving Dumbledore alone staring up at a painting of a medieval village, with pigs and geese wandering across the canvas and grey clouds drifting through the towers of a distant castle in the background.

Barty made himself scarce. 

He charged through the castle, cursing his wooden leg and the unmistakable thump it made as he went. A few students stopped to gape at him. Mostly the young ones who were awed or afraid or just plain goggle eyed at the sight of a missing leg. He wondered what the real Moody would have thought about being stared at like that. He'd have to ask him later, he thought, but for now he needed to get out of this castle, where his position and his purpose felt as shaky as the quaking walls. 

Barty kicked a few students out of his path as he stomped along, just enough to make them scurry away. When he was out of the castle he went down the muddy track to the school gate and limped past the towering iron bars that marked the boundary of Hogwarts grounds, and wards. Then he took a sour swig from his flask, just in case, straightened his shoulders and CRACK, disappeared in the air.

He reappeared moments later on a street in the middle Hogsmeade, startling Mr. Wimble who ran Dervish and Bangs repair shop. The man shrieked and might have wet himself, Barty thought as he turned his rolling glass eye on the shopkeeper.

“Muh, morning,'” Mr. Wimble dipped his hat. Barty inhaled his fear, savored it, and moved on. He stomped past Dogweed and Deathcap, heading toward the bad end of town and then shoved through the stiff door of the Hogshead Inn. 

Old Aberforth looked up from the back when the creak of hinges announced Barty's arrival. The place was dark and mostly empty, the windows covered in grime along with the floor and tables and everything else. A single candle sat on the bar counter, guttering in its own wax. 

“Moody,” Aberforth nodded in apathetic greeting, and went back to wiping at the mug in his hands. “Bit early in the week for drink isn't it?”

Barty dug into his pockets and then dropped a sack of coin on the table with a cross noise. 

“What'll yeh have then?” Aberforth asked, taking the whole bag without another word.

“Privacy,” Barty growled.

“A room?”

“Aye. I've a powerful need to drink myself into a stupor tonight, and that's best done in private. Away from impressionable eyes if you take my meaning.” Ah the benefits a veteran alcoholic disguise, thought Barty.

Aberforth shrugged and conjured an iron key, then tossed it to Barty. “Top of the stairs on the right.”

“How much Fire Whiskey have you got?”

“How much do you need?”

“Enough to make love with the floor,” Barty replied and Aberforth handed over a two bottles of good stock, with the labels pealing off the sides. Barty took his cache and went upstairs without looking back. 

The room he'd been given was small, and the dim light probably hid all manner of housekeeping sins, but Barty wasn't picky. There was a ratty armchair and fire in the grate which was all he needed. He set about the room with Moody's Secrecy Sensor and Probity Probe and other tools, pacing from wall to wall looking for spy holes and spells and muttering wards of protection and confusion and powerful inducements for anyone to just 'go away'. It must be fate, he thought, that Dumbledore hired such a paranoid man for Barty to impersonate.

When he was finally satisfied no one was listening in, he knelt on the floor before the fireplace and whispered, “Meum Lingua Ignis.” Then he thrust his head into the flames. 

The fire fluttered over his cheeks with a warm tickle, and his spine twitched at the vulnerable position this left his backside in, but needs must. In this case he needed to trust Aberforth's complete and utter apathy towards life in general and other people in particular.

“Little Hangleton, Riddle Manor, The Green Room,” he growled into the fire. 

It whirled around him in a dizzying display of sparks, and then faded, revealing a dark wood floor that had once been polished to a shine and now was as dusty and disused as the Hogshead Inn. A large armchair with dark green cushions sat before the fire with a bundle of rags on its seat, and behind it the room stretched into darkness. A rattling breath came from the chair, and a slow slide of scales echoed from somewhere in the dark.

“Master!” Barty called,

“My faithful," Voldemort's a reedy whisper came out of the rags in the armchair. "I assume something momentous has occurred.”

“My lord… the Goblet--”

“Ah, yes. What champions were chosen to follow little Potter to the altar?”

Barty gulped. “None my lord.”

“… what?” The hypnotic whisper turned into a dangerous croak. Barty quickly explained. 

“I put the boy's name in the cup my lord, everything was just as we planned. The goblet would have released the names of its champions during the Halloween Feast but--

“Get on with it!” the voice snapped out like a whip from the dark and Barty flinched in the fire. 

“It began to rain, my lord.” 

Silence greeted this. A decidedly displeased silence. 

“The Goblet of Fire, the ancient cup known to burn through the entire festival of Samhain and never go out, failed for the first time in living memory to do its duty because it _rained?”_ the last word was somewhere between a shriek and hiss.

“No, my lord,” Barty croaked. “I mean, it didn't only rain, my lord.”

“Oh, was there a bit of wind as well?” Voldemort's voice struck again, “or perhaps a cloud?” 

“There was an earth quake my lord.”

The rags in the chair breathed and the weight of anger in the dark became a little less.

“Go on,” Voldemort ordered with a sibilant hiss, and a hint of something other then murder in his tone. 

Barty gladly plunged ahead, describing the storm and the shaking castle, the wreckage and crying students, and the strange performance of the Goblet. As he spoke, two small bone white hands rose up and clutched the arms of the chair. Then Voldemort's face appeared out of the rags, distorted like a leper with a missing nose, twisted mouth and eyes with green sparks set deep under hollowed brows. The whole form was no bigger then a porcelain doll.

“There was a name in the fire my lord, but it was not a champion for the tournament, it was no one who could be at Hogwarts.”

Voldemort leaned closer to the grate in the hearth, the red glow of the fire making him look devilish.

“It was Slytherin my lord. Salazar Slytherin. The Lord of Serpents, the Founder himself.” Barty spoke with awe. Somehow, saying it out loud made it more real, more terrifying, and more inspiring.

“Was it now,” Voldemort's tiny body leaned back, disappearing into the darkness of his chair once more.

“It was, my lord, I saw his name rise up and the cup went dark and the doors opened!” He explained the rest of the night, meeting Dumbledore and the others. The stranger who appeared on the steps. Dumbledore ordering him taken inside, and the intolerable staff meeting he had just suffered through with the rest of the House heads.

“I see,” Voldemort rasped.

Barty wished he could see his master's face but he was limited by the fireplace.

“It's true my lord, Dumbledore all but confirmed it.”

A sharp snap came from the floor around Voldemort's chair with low hiss and the sinister scrape of scales on wood. Yes, not the best name to cite with his Lord, Barty winced, but however much a fool Dumbledore was, he was powerful.

“This must be a sign,” Barty tried, prostrating himself lower in the fire. “Slytherin rises just as you are about to return to your glory and make our world great again!” 

There was silence, then Voldemort whispered, “An auspicious day indeed. If it is true.”

“You doubt it, master?” Barty asked, which was better then asking 'do you doubt me?' and getting a lash of Cruciatus through the fire for his arrogance.

“Dumbledore has many tricks,” was Voldemort's only reply. “We will need to discover the truth of this for ourselves. It… may be possible,” he allowed.

Barty nodded fervently. Ever cautious and thoughtful was his lord, always he kept his eye on the future, always ahead of his enemies. Barty smiled, his tongue whipping out. 

“And the tournament, my lord? Do we go ahead with our plan? If they light the cup again I can still--”

“No,” Voldemort cut him off. “Lets not be excessive and give the game away, Barty,” his lord hissed. 

Barty shivered in pleasure at the sound of his name on his lord's lips. 

“This stranger will be more then enough to distract Dumbledore,” Voldemort continued. “And a more engrossing story for the Prophet. This unexpected arrival may serve us just as well as the boy for that, and putting Potter in the tournament now would make things volatile. We don’t want to distract from the distraction. Make sure Ms. Skeeter gets a tip about this stranger, and then you can take the boy in spring when we’re ready for him. I trust your ability to remain discreet.” Voldemort's hiss was more a threat then a compliment and Barty nodded avidly. 

“Good,” his lord said. “In the meantime, stay close at hand. Watch the stranger. Befriend him. Learn his secrets. He may indeed be Slytherin returned, and we don’t want anything to happen to him.” 

There was something odd about those words. The way they were said as if, maybe, they would indeed want something “to happen” to this stranger. 

Of course, Barty thought, if this _was_ some trick of Dumbledore's then this pawn of the old goat's would meet a sharp and very untimely end. Barty would beg to do it himself. But…. he had seen that name wreathed in flame, and he had seen Dumbledore's face when the stranger collapsed the steps at his feet. He did not think this was a ruse. 

His lord was wise to be cautious. He must be. There were so many plots against him, that it would be foolish to believe every tale your servents brought you and Barty applauded his master for that. Clever lords lived, stupid ones died, but Barty had always had a nose for power and he’d tasted it on the rain last Halloween night. He did not think this would turn out to be anyone’s trick. Salazar Slytherin had risen again, and his master would see that was true. His lords would come together and they would be one in all things. It could not be any other way.

“Yes master!” Barty accepted his new task eagerly and then withdrew his head from the fire. 

He sat back on his heals and took up one of the squat bottles of Fire Whiskey, knocking back a large drink. It burned going down and left a pleasant ache in his throat. More importantly it left a recognizable stench on his breath. He took both bottles, and with a wave of his wand, banished the contents, leaving only dregs in their bottoms. Then he dropped into the rank old chair by the fire, closed his eyes, put his feet up and waited for someone to come find him. Poor old Moody who'd gone to drink his nerves into a stupor after a horrible shock. 

It was stretching his performance a little. Moody hadn't been known as a drunk. He was too paranoid for that and more likely to be found pacing the grounds in a mania, but Barty had been working the drink angle since he was hired. Moody was as sharp as ever, oh yes, sharp as a tack, just needed something to steady his nerves. A little sip here, a taste there, nothing to worry about.

It would cause problems if they thought he couldn't do the job after finding him in an apparent drunken stupor, but what was life without a little risk in the name of your Dark Lord.

~

Far away, in a dark room at the top of the stairs in a ruined manor house, Lord Voldemort sat in his chair, scheming and cursing. The chair gave an ominous creak as his bony fingers dug into it, piercing the faded upholstery and releasing its stuffing in little white puffs around his knuckles.

"Bloody, shit, fucking, balls, ass, head and hole," he swore in a rancid hiss. His heritage was showing, and not the one worth being proud of. If a wizard was going to swear he should do it elegantly, but Voldemort's condition had sunk him right back to his most base and puerile. He was the size of child and swearing like muggle. 

This stranger was a _problem_. 

Of course it wasn't true. It was impossible this man could actually be Salazar Slytherin. The Goblet was not infallible. If it could not be tampered with it could still be tricked, as he and Barty had so elegantly proven. 

No, this was a trick of some kind, and Dumbledore could be ineffable but this wasn't his style. It was too... Slytherin. This was likely some savvy opportunist looking for glory and money, and if they were playing the long game, a great deal of power. Appearing at the center of the most watched and reported event in Britain would be just the way to do it. There would plenty of pockets to plunder and ears to whisper into at the Tri-Wizard Tournament. According to the Daily Prophet tickets had sold out in a day, most of them to the oldest and wealthiest wizards and witches in Britain. Malfoy had a box seat, naturally. 

The wonder was that Dumbledore had let this charlatan in while Tom Riddle had a been persona non grata with the 'great warlock' since he was eleven. It was annoying. Very annoying, and very inconvenient.

He had not clawed his way back from the brink of death and sucked down the pearly ichor of a unicorn to be usurped by some wandering con artist!

He could not eliminate the man himself, Voldemort couldn't even walk, and he couldn't send any of his followers either. Never mind that he only had two of the lowest leeches of his once vast entourage to serve his needs now. Or that getting Wormtail into Hogwarts would be near impossible even if he could do without him. Compromising Barty was out of the question. More then that though, his power had been founded on the shoulders of Salazar Slytherin’s legend. His supposed connection to the great wizard, and his championing of Slytherin's ideals. Impostor or not Voldemort could not openly oppose a man who was, at least as far as the Death Eaters knew, his inspiration. 

But there were other ways.

“Wormtail!” he shrieked into the corridors of the old house, and after a moment the rat appeared with a nervous step.

“ye, ye, yes, lord?” Pettigrew stuttered.

“You have errands to run.” 

After Pettigrew had scurried off with his instructions, Voldemort curled his painful, brittle limbs into the soiled heap of silk and furs in his chair. Then he lulled himself to sleep with whispered plans of murder and dreamed of power slipping through his bony fingers like the sands of time.


	4. Chapter 4

Salazar woke up with a powerful and unyielding need to piss. He groaned, rolled over, found the edge of the bed, and searched the floor for a chamber pot. Which was nowhere to be found. He groaned again and hauled himself upright, pulling black curls away from his face so he could peer around the dim room.

The fire in the hearth had sunk down to embers and only a weak grey daylight filtered through the diamond glass panes in the windows, leaving bars of shadow on the floor that looked like a prison grate. His nurse's tray of potions had been set beside the bed, with little cups and cauldrons bubbling merrily and filling the chamber with medicinal smells. But there was no pot to be seen.

How could these people be so backward they did not even keep a chamber pot? He sighed and limped to the window, ready to relieve himself in the wind and damn his dignity, but found it welded shut. He swore and rattled the frame. The glass and wood remained sturdy and unbothered. There was nothing on the sill and no dirty crocks or ewer's on the bench. He did not even see a washing bowl.

“They must use something,” he hissed and limped around the chamber. The soles of his feet throbbed with every step but the plight of his bladder was even more ominous, so he grit his teeth and kept going.

He found a door hidden behind a tapestry of an old wizard peeing into a knight's wine goblet, but his hopes were dashed when he hobbled through and found only a narrow chamber filled with uncanny clay sculptures. 

There was a basin, large enough the bathe in. A bowl sculpted into a table with a hole in the bottom and a silver spout stretching over it like the raised prick of some beast. There was a white clay seat that resembled a garderobe's throne, but when he pulled up the lid all he found was a basin of water. No latrine pit in sight. He could not even tell where the hole in the bottom went, but given the clean odor it was not meant for shit.

He hung his head, and with a sharp word in Euskara finally just demanded a chamber pot appear to him. It took three tries. His magic was hard to pull up, like a weed too weak and shy of spring to push all the way out of the earth. He almost gave up and braced himself for the humiliation of soiling the floor, but finally a large bronze pot appeared out of the air by his bandaged feet.

“Thank you, Aker,” he whispered, and pissed with great relief. 

It took another long, terrible effort to summon up the magic to banish the pot when he was done and he felt bled out when he finally sent it off to the back gardens. Or, at least, where he remembered the gardens were. He winced, hoping that had not changed, and limped back to the bedchamber. 

The room had gotten chilly while he slept, but the tapestries and furs helped hold in some warmth. He was tempted to go back to bed and never rise again, but a large meal had been left on the table with food fit for a lord, and his gut rebelled at the though of leaving it uneaten. There was thick, soft bread with butter, fat juicy sausages, carrots, cabbage, potatoes cooked into a mash, with an extra decadence of Pepper. But the true extravagance was the cup, made all in glass and worked so fine that he could not find a single warp or blemish. It was a master piece.

It was also very stupid.

A cup of glass would not last a single meal in his house before getting smashed, and he could only imagine the mess on Godric or Helga's side of the hall. It was a waste. A very pointed waste. He wondered if Master Dumbledore was trying to impress or intimidate him by this show of wealth. 

He pushed the glass aside along with the strange silver pronged tools by the plate, grabbing the clay pitcher instead. He was surprised to find it filled, not with wine or ale, but some strange sweet smelling drink the color of _ġeolurēad_. He sniffed, suspicious, then washed the whole jug with a whispered spell to burn away disease or any creeping things lingering in it.

He was a little shaky after that and ate heartily but slowly, mopping up the grease with his bread and taking his time, savoring every mouthful. When he was done he licked his fingers. Salazar did not believe in being unclean. 

He was aware, in a distant muddled sort of way, that he had not eaten anything for a very long time but that seemed like something out of a dream. Everything around him did. The table and furs, the oak chests, even the candles looked strange. 

He remembered when his mother and grandmother died, and how the mundanity of everything had felt so wrong. It did not seem possible the world could just go on as it was. The need to eat and piss and put on his boots felt like an insult to their loss. As if his need to live meant their deaths did not matter.

This, he thought looking about the room, was just as obscene. He had lost an unfathomable amount of time. His whole world was someone else's history now, but the sun was up, the castle was breathing and a pigeon had just shit on the window as if nothing had changed. He half expected to hear Godric burst in, full of life and bluster, braids swinging in his beard as he demanded to know what Salazar was doing inside on such a glorious day.

Movement by the door made Salazar's heart leap and he spun round, Godric's name on his lips, but there was no high land warrior there. Only a blank wall. Then the bed covers twitched and he spun round again, thinking of Rowena with her black hair spread across the pillows, but no one was there. The bed shifted again as if bespelled, covers straightened and fluffed themselves, and Salazar narrowed his eyes. A pillow wobbled and then he heard the soft pattering of feet. 

He got out of his chair and crouched with great pain, putting one hand on the stone floor to keep his balance as he peered under the bed. There were two knobbly bare feet, no bigger than a straw doll's. Salazar leaned around the bedframe and there, tugging on the covers, he found a pale creature with large pointed ears and a long nose, wearing a white cloth around its waist embroidered with Hogwarts' crest. 

It was a Hob, he marveled. The little hearth spirits Godric had described. Godric was always going on about elves from his family land, insisting they were all over the northern hills, but Salazar had never seen one. Godric said they simply did not like him, and Salazar would have thought Godric was making it all up if Rowena had not also told him about the ùruisg, who kept watch on the rocks and rivers of her home.

There was nothing like them where Salazar's people came from. The few Lares who survived Rome had disappeared long ago, before his grandmother's mother was born, and the only elves he had seen on the road were evil, mischievous things that would sooner bite off your fingers then sweep your fires. "Asking an elf for help is like crawling into a dragon's mouth to light a torch!" Salazar remembered saying after he spit up his beer laughing so hard. 

But Godric always insisted they would come one day. He said he would know that Hogwarts had truly become a home when the elves appeared and it became a old joke. Godric blustering, red faced, insisting that his Hobs were real, and no they did not steal your teeth or stab you with pins. Salazar and Helga would mock him and Rowena ignored them all while Godric yelled that they would both be sorry one day. 

He supposed "one day" was now "today". Because here he was, staring at one in broad daylight.

“Hello,” he called softly.

The elf shrieked and dove under a nearby stool. Salazar reared back and fell on his ass, but kept his eyes locked on the Hob, unwilling to blink lest it disappear. The little creature clutched at the stool like it was a shield.

“Ondo ezagutu arrotza,” he whispered. The elf's ears perked up and it stuck it's long nose out from behind the stool. Two absurdly large eyes looked up at Salazar, who gave it his most disarming smile. 

“ez izan beldurrik,” he said, holding out a hand. “You don't need to be afraid. Do you make your hearth here at Hogwarts?”

The little Hob nodded.

“How long have you been here?” he asked. 

The creature mumbled something into the stool and Salazar shook his head. So the little Hob gulped, and tried again.

“Tawby cleaned the tower room today, and yesterday, and the day before.” The elf tugged it's ear in a nervous gesture. “Before that Tawby was cleaning the Great Hall, because all the stones were dancing and it left a very big mess, and before that--”

“But how long have you been in this castle?” Salazar interrupted, what he suspected was going to a be a very long list of everything Tawby had ever done.

The elf blinked. “Tawby has always been at Hogwarts.”

“Is that what you are called? Tawby?”

The elf nodded.

“Well met, Tawby. I am Salazar son of Slytherin,” and he bowed his head, as low as he could while keeping both eyes of the hob so it could not disappear on him. 

Tawby's eyes, impossibly, got even bigger. They looked like they might pop out of their sockets. The elf squeezed around the stool and took a timid step forward, looking at him as if he was the one who might vanish if the elf breathed wrong. He kept very still. The moment was broken by a harsh tap at the chamber door. Tawby gave a small shriek and disappeared in a magical crack, like a child breaking a nut in excitement. 

Salazar sighed and hung his head.

“Come in,” he ordered, wearily. 

Dumbledore swept into the room with an air of clueless munificence and a new but still horribly colored robe. This one reminded Salazar of Pixie vomit. It even sparkled. He grimaced. Dumbledore looked about and then smiled grandly when he found Salazar sitting on the floor by the bed. If his beard could curl in satisfaction Salazar was sure it would have done so.

“Ah, up and about I see! And feeling better too I hope,” the old wizard shut the door softly behind him. The small click of a lock did not escape Salazar's notice.

“I am not feeling worse,” he allowed, eyeing the old master.

“Some days that is all any of us can hope for, but I'm sure a scrumptious meal will improve things. I always feel better after a bit of lemon curd and a nice scone.” Dumbledore sat himself at the table and produced a bit of bread and a small pot from his sleeve, then began to dribble out something bright and sticky on a spoon.

“I'm sure.” Salazar stood with care, using the bedpost as a crutch. He shook his head when the old man offered him bread covered in yellow syrup.

“Well, Madame Pomfrey has been delayed by a rash of pickled tongues among the student choir, but that will not keep her long, so I'm afraid my time this afternoon must be short.”

“Are you not supposed to be here?” Salazar raised an eyebrow. 

Dumbledore had claimed he was master of the castle. If that was so then surely he could come and go, and do as he liked. The old wizard merely nibbled on his bread.

“Madame Pomfrey has given strict instructions to us all not to exhaust you, and I have been informed that I am a very exhausting person.”

Salazar privately agreed with that. “Then why are you here risking your witch's wrath?”

“Ah, well, I was hoping to catch you before our estimable potions master topped off your medicines, so that you might offer some insight on a little mystery we're having. My boy you look haggard, won't you sit down?” 

Dumbledore waved at the empty chair by the table, and it's wooden legs twitched, making the chair waddle in place like an over eager goose. Salazar glared at the chair until it sagged back into its original shape, then hauled himself over and sat in it. If he had to deal with the old man he might as well be off his feet for it.

“What sort of mystery?” he asked, stretching out his legs and easing the weight off his aching heels.

Dumbledore pulled a large wooden cup out of his robes and set it on the table between them. 

It was roughly carved. The outer sides were made of untouched bark straight from the tree. He picked it up, studying it with his hands and his mind. It felt very old and set in it's ways. The smell of wood smoke and roasting hazlenuts drifted up to him and far away he could hear laughter and clapping. He stroked the wooden rim, remembering long nights trekking through hallows and horrors, following Hogwarts flickering warmth like a candle in the dark. 

“Do you know what this is?” Dumbledore asked.

“Of course. It's a Burning Cup.” Salazar set the goblet back down.

“Oh.” Dumbledore leaned forward with a curious expression. “Were there many of them, in your time?”

“A fair few. Why?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the old man.

“Oh curiosity,” Dumbledore hummed, and stroked his beard. “It's always a joy to discover how little we know. This Goblet is one a kind, as far as the ministry knows. A rare antiquity of sorts. How was it used in your time, if you don't mind my asking?” 

Salazar shrugged. “Rowena lit them for harvest festival, to mark the end of summer and the raiding season. The fires lead us through the night so we would not get lost between one year and the next, and a well lit castle makes tricks and mischief a bit harder, particularly if anyone has grudges they have been nursing all year long. We lit them for Beltane too, but summer is different. People are less concerned about the dead and more about the cattle.”

“Were the dead concern?” 

“A grave one,” Salazar smirked, and Dumbledore's eyebrows rose, giving him a goat like appearance. Salazar sighed, rubbed his brow and continued. “Some spirits liked to return to their families during the festival nights, usually expecting to be entertained. It was more a nuisance than anything else, but people got very inventive avoiding spirits they would rather not talk too. 

You should have seen Godric dressing up in Rowena's robe last year, trying to tip-toe his way out of the castle. He even shaved his beard off! He might have gotten away with it too if he had left that blasted hat behind, but of course he could not bear to part with it and ended up running around in skirts trying to avoid her family as well as his!” 

He snickered, thinking back on better nights filled with ale and apples, laughter and the roar of bonfires on the hills, but when he looked up his laughter died in his throat. Dumbledore was watching him watery eyes and Salazar shifted in his chair. He picked up the cup again, twirling it in his hands, remembering the warmth of Rowena's skin and the way their fingers had laced together around the wood, smearing black ink and ash together. He wished she was here. 

“If you have come here looking for the secrets to those mysteries then I must disappoint you,” he told Dumbledore bluntly. “This magic is more Rowena's domain then mine. She comes from the Oak Knowers. I came from far to the south, we did not share the same rituals. Or the same gods. I only--”

The chamber door swung open with a sudden bang, and Dumbledore jumped in his seat. Salazar turned to see mistress Pomfrey bustling in carrying a basket of clean linen. She had removed the wimple, leaving her grey hair tied up in a simple braided knot. To his relief it made her look less like a nun, but she was no less formidable. As soon as she saw Dumbledore she dropped the basket, pulled out her wand and marched right up to the old man, shaking it at him.

“Albus! what did I say?” She demanded.

Dumbledore somehow managed to look perfectly innocent and mildly sheepish at the same time.

“Now Poppy--”

“He hasn't been out of bed two days! He doesn't need you dithering about and upsetting him with a lot of questions, and if that thing-” she grabbed the cup from Salazar and wrapped it up in her apron before shoving it firmly at Dumbledore's chest, leaving him to juggle it. “-really had something to do with bringing him here, then he shouldn't be anywhere near it! Who knows what could happen!”

Salazar gaped at her, and then looked at Dumbledore who had raised the apron covered cup up in a gesture of peace. As if that would somehow shield him.

“Poppy, I merely--”

Pomfrey shot the old man a severe look and Dumbledore subsided with an unintelligible mumble.

“Look at him!” Pomfrey waved at Salazar. “He's pale as a ghost”

“I am not,” Salazar protested, though he really did not know what he looked like.

“Now dear,” she turned on him and before he knew what happened she had tucked some of his hair behind his ear, leaving him appalled and open mouthed. “You don't need to worry about any of this tournament business, all you need to do is let yourself get better. We have some nice--”

“What tournament?” Salazar interrupted, leaning away from her and her heinous hair tucking fingers.

“Ah, well,” Dumbledore began.

“Albus!” Pomfrey snapped.

“There's no need to shout Poppy.” The old wizard smiled, though he was sitting a bit lower in his chair now then he had before she came in. “We may be old but neither of us are deaf yet,” he winked at Salazar, who stared back at him. 

“What is this all about?” he demanded.

“Nothing that can't wait,” Pomfrey insisted.

“I'm not sure it can Poppy.” Dumbledore argued. “We are bound to proceed with this tournament and whatever Salazar can share about this cup before we do could be of the utmost importance. And I'm sure he could benefit from the distraction. Hmmm?” 

Pomfrey did not look happy, but she relented. “All right, but one skip in his heart rate, one hint of bad color and you'll stop right where you are. I don't care how old you are Albus I will drag you out by your ear.”

“Yes Poppy,” Dumbledore nodded, looking suitably cowed. He placed the cup on table again, pealing back one apron corner and said, “we call this The Goblet of Fire.” 

He explained about the tournament. About the wizards and witches who had come from far and wide to participate, and how the cup was set up to judge the worthiness of any who wished to compete. Salazar listened with rapidly thinning patience as Dumbledore went on about past tournaments and new challenges and Drum Strings and Bow Batons. Whatever they were. 

A dull ache began to form behind his eyes and it grew steadily more painful with every word from the old man’s mouth. Pomfrey hovered over Salazar, her wand moving ceaselessly as she did mysterious things over his head and heart and feet. When Dumbledore finally finished Salazar rubbed at his eyes.

“Let me see if I have understood this,” he began in a tone flatter then the stone floor under his heels. “Your people have been using a Burning Cup as an arbiter for games?”

Dumbledore nodded and smiled. 

Salazar's headache tripled. “Glorious,” he muttered. “I suppose next you will tell me you have the Pair Dadeni on your hearth and are using it for cooking beans and broth!”

“Not that I know of,” Dumbledore beamed affably “but I can ask.” 

Salazar gave the old man a glare so foul it had left hardened knights pissing themselves before. 

“And you think that I am somehow tied up in this game of yours?”

“I fear that is a possibility, and a concerning one. Particularly since madame Pomfrey has assured me in the strongest language possible that you are not up to competing in anything and the Goblet's magic is quite binding.”

Salazar snorted. “I doubt it is that simple.”

“At the very least the Goblet knew you were here,” Dumbledore said, steepling his fingers over his beard. “Which begs certain questions.”

“Of course it knew!” Salazar snapped, his temper flashing quick and dark. “They are not toys to be lit up at a whim you--” 

He grit his teeth and took a long calming breath through his nose, under the sharp eye of mistress Pomfrey, who was looking ready to do something medicinal. Lord, he wished Rowena were here. He wanted her cunning and her knowledge and her patience, and he would not mind seeing her pluck Dumbledore's sympathetic eyes out of his head for a divination either. 

“These games,” Salazar finally demanded when he'd wrestled his temper down. “You said they are a test of strength and cunning. Is it a bloodsport?”

Dumbledore hummed and dithered for bit but eventually said, “yes I suppose. It has always been a dangerous event, certainly, but when the ministry revived it this year they planned every challenge with the aim of spilling as little blood as possible.”

“But your champions have died before?” Salazar leaned forward.

Dumbledore nodded carefully. “Yes.” 

Salazar got up, with some difficulty, and limped up to the window overlooking the grey, heath covered hills below. A nasty thought wormed its way up from the depths of his drugged mind, dragging a host of loathsome possibilities with it.

“How many put their names in your cup for this tournament?” he asked.

“Anywhere from three to three hundred I imagine,” Dumbledore replied. 

“You should find them.”

“Of course. We'll be choosing the three champions by--

“No,” Salazar interrupted. “All of them. Every witch and wizard who put their name in that cup.”

He turned around and Dumbledore was no longer twinkling. His wrinkles were curving downwards and he didn't looked quite so harmless or foolish anymore.

“Why?” 

“Because you took a cup that burns with a fire seen by gods and monsters and the dead, and you bound it to a modern sacrifice,” Salazar hissed. He rubbed his face again, trying to push away the fatigue clouding his head, and made a meager effort to reassure the old man. “It may be nothing. It probably is nothing, but all the same.”

“Yes, all the same.” Dumbledore murmured. “Well, we should leave you to rest.” The old man stood and brushed down his garish robes, sharing a look with Pompfrey while she pocketed her wand and gathered up the used rags and bandages by the bed. 

“Severus will be up later to refill your potions, dear,” Pomfrey told him. 

Salazar nodded vaguely without looking at her, his attention fixed on the window and the hills in his memory where his family had danced through Saimhain night. Where Godric had leapt over hay bales, fleeing from ghosts and mummers, Helga beckoned the dead to feasts and Rowena kissed the cattle, marking bulls for winter slaughter. When, for a whole week, there had been no boundaries between them or time, or sex and death. 

The shuffling feet and muttering of Dumbledore and Pomfrey sounded very far away.

“... how are we supposed to find every student who put their name that goblet without causing a panic?”

“I’m sure Mr. Bagman can provide a suitably boring but mandatory survey,” Dumbledore whispered in a soothing voice. “For his sporting department, naturally.”

“One more thing,” Salazar called, and the muffled noise paused. “Are there always three champions?”

“Yes.” Dumbledore's answer was low and faint. “Is that important?”

“No.” Salazar lied. “Just a curiosity.” 

Dumbledore left. The door shut with the click of a lock. The chamber grew silent and Salazar was alone again, staring at the overcast sky while his mind filled with nights when Rowena braided snake spines in his hair. When she leaned over a burning fire to kiss him. When her black stained fingers traced the rim of a cup filled with ghostly light and told him about the power of a Three Fold Death in all its many guises. 

He needed to get out of this room. He needed omens to divine and study, and he needed a drink. A lot of drink.


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing to do was make a divination. Salazar would have to do a bit of extra work for it. Omens were everywhere if you knew what to look for, but if he wanted the signs to come to him he would need to summon them, and for that, he would need an offering. 

It should be easy enough. If they had lit the goblet as Dumbledore said then they must be coming to the dark half of the year. The dull grey sky and driving rain outside were right for it, and the Burning Cups could only be lit at the liminal times. 

They had already slaughtered a pig, he thought, looking back at the plate of food he'd devoured. And he could not have been here for more then a day, maybe two, so they might still have guts that hadn’t been thrown in the gardens yet. A fresh kill would be better, but he didn't know what the castle's stock was now. He would have to take an inventory at some point. He rubbed his eyes, thinking about how much work that was going be on his own. For a moment he hated Godric so much he could have spit on his corpse. 

He would just have to take it one day at a time. Salazar limped back to the hearth, settled in a chair and thought about his next move as the heat from the fire warmed his aching feet. The wind outside beat against the walls and the sky slowly turned darker as the day wore on. 

He was dozing lightly when a soft pattering startled him. At first it sounded like rain on the window glass, but then it grew into more of a slapping sound, like bare feet on stone. Salazar peered through half lidded eyes and saw the Hob was back. The little elf was standing on a chair and cleaning up the dishes. 

This could be his answer to making the offering he needed. Perhaps he could make a deal with the elf. What he wanted was straightforward enough; nothing that should cost him a limb or a future favor, and Godric had spoken of Hobs as simple creatures with simple desires. Easily offended by things like hats, and libel to disappear when abused or insulted, but never mean or vicious. 

Helga had once told him, privately, that she suspected Hobs and Urisks liked people like Godric because he made such a mess wherever he went. Salazar wondered, idly, if clutter and grime attracted them the way other fairies were drawn by milk and honey. Perhaps he should bribe the elf with some trinket. A quill maybe, or an acorn.

“Hello again,” he murmured as softly as he could, not wishing to startle the creature. 

The elf went still as a mouse and looked up at Salazar with wide eyes. When it caught him watching the elf ducked under the table. At least, mostly under the table. It's ears were still visibly flapping by the empty plates, and after a moment the head rose just enough that the elf's large green eyes could peer at him over the wood. 

He slowly sat up and met the elf's gaze with a slow smirk. The elf's ears trembled, but it did not flee.

“I have a proposition for you,” he whispered. Then took a breath and said the perilous words his grandmother had warned him never to utter while drunk or desperate. “How would you like to make a deal?”

The hob's reaction was not what he expected. Perhaps he'd simply had too many long nights with goblins and skrats, but there was no slow, villainous grin or even any greed in the elf's face. Instead it looked... confused. The elf, and he thought it was the same one that had been startled away by Dumbledore, rose just enough to get it's long nose over the table and tapped it's fingers on the wood in a nervous pattern.

“Does the master need something?” the elf, Tawby, asked.

“I would not say need,” Salazar hedged. “A passing thought, a whim, perhaps. Only it would take a bit work and I would rather not do so much walking if I do not have to.” 

Tawby straightened at the mention of work, and Salazar wiggled his bandaged feet and gave the elf a pitiable look. Then he stood slowly, not only to keep from startling the hob but for the sake of his feet which did complain with a sharp pain when he put his weight back on them. Then he limped over to his clothes, making a show of being as weak as possible, which took less play acting then he would have liked. His wool and leathers were still folded beside the bed and covered in dried mud. He dug around in the pouches, pushing aside a flint flake and bone awl before coming up with a polished river stone. 

The elf watched with timid suspicion when he held out the rock. 

“If I give you this, will you do something for me?” he asked.

Tawby stared at the rock with something like doubt and awe, long fingers twitching on the wooden table.

“It's not… paying is it?” Tawby squinted up at him. 

Salazar was not sure why that was a sticking point, but fay were strange creatures with their own rules. He could work around it.

“It is a gift,” he coaxed. “My gift to you, a show of my appreciation for what I hope you will do for me.”

It was not subtle, but Salazar had is doubts on whether the elf would understand him if he was less obvious. It did not strike him as a complex creature. 

Tawby still hesitated. So he shrugged carelessly and made an exaggerated move to pocket the stone, saying, “But if you do not want it--” 

“No!” the elf squeaked. “Tawby wants it, Tawby does! Tawby can do anything for Hogwart's master, anything he wants!”

The long fingers reached over the table grasping for the river rock, while Tawby nodded so violently Salazar half expected the elf's head to snap right off, but the creature seemed made of stern stuff and merely bounced on the table.

He smiled and tossed the pebble to the elf. Tawby began cooing over it like the river stone was the most precious thing in world. It reminded him, a little uncomfortably, of the way he'd once seen pilgrims clutching at the trunk of some saint's supposed relics. 

It took some time to draw the elf's attention away from the rock again, and then he found that sheep's entrails were oddly hard to ask for. Tawby did not understand what he wanted and what followed was a long and frustrating conversation. They had butchered meat at the castle yes, and plenty of it, yes, and taking more would not hurt their stores, no, but they had none of the guts. Tawby could find some, oh yes, of course, but it would take time and they would have to go far away, and it would be expensive. From the look on the Hob's wrinkled little face Salazar thought Tawby was not actually sure how to go about doing it, but did not want to say so. 

It was a complete madness. The castle larder did not have eyes, or tongues or tails, because those were special, but Tawby was sure master Dumbledore would buy them if master Salazar wished. Master Salazar did _not_ wish and wanted to know why, if the castle had such an abundance of stock that they could afford sausage on their table morning, noon and night, they could not bring him the beast's livers. Tawby did not know. Also the castle apparently did not have sheep anymore, and when Salazar asked if there had been plague it all got more confusing.

Eventually, Tawby offered to bring him a goat from the village, and Salazar nodded and did not ask why that was the only animal the elf could acquire.

“I will need fresh clothes too,” he sighed. “If that is what must be done.” 

He would have to make a full sacrifice and that could not be done unclean. So he had to wash. 

“Does the master like wizard clothes, or muggle ones?”

Salazar had no idea what the difference was, so he said, “both I suppose.”

Tawby nodded. 

“And a bath, and the strongest drink in the castle, ale or wine would do, and clean linen...” He trailed off, thinking out loud.

“Tawby can bring all those things!” the elf said.

“Are you sure?” he put on a doubtful face, partly just to needle the creature.

“Yes yes yes!” the hob was bouncing on it's toes now. Salazar pretended his doubt was assuaged by the elf's enthusiasm.

“Well, if you are certain, then I will owe you a shiny feather and an acorn after this.” 

Tawby was in ecstasies. The elf squealed in delight, climbed up on the table and practically danced around the dishes. Salazar watched with a bemused sort of mirth. It was very a lively creature. 

Tawby capered over the plates and bounced from stool to bed to hearth until the elf was standing on the table with his mud caked clothes, nose to nose with him. It leaned one way and then another, studying his face. Then Tawby reached out and brushed thin fingers over his chin with an expression incredulous daring.

“Is master truly Master Syltherin?” The elfe whispered with too much reverence.

Salazar narrowed his eyes and nodded. “I am.”

Tawby sucked in a breath, and then stuffed both hands in it's mouth.

“Has--” the elf broke off, turning a mild shade of pink and Salazar raised an eyebrow. It gulped and gathered itself. “Has Master Slytherin come home to Hogwarts then?”

“So it seems,” he said.

The elf turned beet red and disappeared in a sudden 'Pop' of air. 

Salazar sank into a nearby chair feeling a little desolate in the sudden absence. The elf didn't say much but its presence had brightened the room considerably. He waited, watching the sun go down and the light from the window fade across the floor. Soon the place was only lit by the red glow of the fire and a few candles, softening the corners of the world with shadow.

When Tawby finally come back it was with a tall bottle of amber colored drink in one hand and a frayed rope in the other, tied to a rangy, matted, and very angry looking goat. The animal let out a disgruntled bleat and started chewing on the drapes around the bed. 

Tawby looked at him with a dreadfully hopeful expression and held out the bottle when he limped over to shoo the goat away from the bed. It stepped on his foot.

“Aah!” He cried, and dropped to the floor clutching his foot in agony while he bit his tongue and the blasted goat made for the tapestries. He was going to enjoy slaughtering that beast. Tawby had flown into hysterics the moment he fell and the next thing Salazar knew he was sitting with his back to the bed while Tawby dashed back and forth doing something mysterious with rags and a broom. 

He peeled his hands back from the throbbing foot and examined it. He saw no blood through the bandages, and it did not feel broken at least.

A rush of water caught his attention and he looked up to see Tawby standing beside a large wooden tub in front of the fire which was filling up water. Steam rose quickly leaving a distinct smell of sage and comfrey. 

He hopped on one foot to the tub, avoiding the goat, and grinned at Tawby.

“Oh you wonderful creature!” he said, trailing his fingers through the water and finding it wonderfully hot. The elf turned another distinct shade of red and started running around the chamber squeaking, while he pulled off his shift and climbed into the water. 

He left his bandages on and the linen trailed around his ankles as he sank down with groan. He would know soon enough what was hidden under those wrappings and was not eager to hasten the day. 

His muscles quivered and eased as he soaked, letting the heat seep deep into his body. Tawby popped in and out of the room, fussing with things, dumping blocks of soap in the bath, and chasing the goat away from pillows.

Salazar scrubbed himself raw, and eventually heaved himself out of the tub. When he was done rubbing his hair with a linen cloth Tawby had set out, he found the tub was empty, the floor was tidy and Tawby was standing on the bed next to a pile of neatly folded clothes, looking sweet and sly. 

There was a set robes with a familiar cut, but the fabric was so extraordinary, so soft and heavy and died in such rich colors that he just ran his hands over them awhile, gaping. They were voluminous and more elaborate than anything he'd ever worn. Not even his ceremonial robes, for weddings, feasts and funerals were so fantastic. He felt if he put them on he might ruin them. 

The other clothes were strange but far more practical. 

Salazar held up one top piece and could not decide if it was a short shift or a tunic. It seemed to do the job of both. It was soft, and black and done up the front with the tiniest buttons he had ever seen. The trousers were made of some tough blue canvas and had a tricky closure with metal teeth over the crotch. That made Salazar very nervous and he set them aside. 

He eventually found an under garment with a strange, stretchy waist and that occupied him for a good long time. Since he could feel no magic that would allow it to stretch so much. It was bizarre, and delightful, and he desperately wanted to know how it was made. 

He was so curious that he dissected the shorts with his knife while Tawby peered over his shoulder. He cut the cloth and pulled a band out of the waist, which he pulled and snapped and smelled and then pealed apart thread by thread until all he had a bunch stretchy strings. But he had no more idea what it was when he finished than when he had started.

Having destroyed the short breeches Salazar tossed them aside and donned the linen brais that had been set out with the robes instead. Then he pulled on the black shirt and rough blue trousers and very, very, _very_ carefully pulled the metal teeth closed. He felt much better all around. The pants were a little rough but less itchy then wool. They were very nice clothes, he decided. Simple and good for labor or fighting, which the robes were not.

Clean and dressed Salazar finally began laying out what he needed for a divination while the goat nibbled on the shorts he had ruined. 

The floor in front of the hearth was swept and washed with drops from the bottle Tawby had provided. It smelled like a pungent fire and Tawby said it was called “fire whiskey,” with a self satisfied look. Salazar laid out clean linen and placed a copper bowl on it, which he found after rummaging around the nurse's potion tray. He washed his hands in the whiskey, and then his mouth, and nearly choked when it burned his tongue and teeth like the fire it was named after. The feeling lingered while he cleaned his longest knife, but he was pleased to find that no matter how much whiskey he poured out the bottle never ran dry.

Finally Tawby lead the goat to him.

He whispered a prayer to Aker and Mari, the witch of Aketegi, then he caught the goat's eyes and slit it's throat, quick and clean over the copper bowl, holding it there until the bowl was full of blood and the beast was dead. Then he cut the goat open and his Divination truly began.

He pulled out the liver, turned it over, rubbed the meat between his fingers and studied the gory organ. 

He wanted to know if his suspicions about Dumbledore's Goblet of Fire had merit, if that truly was what brought him home after a thousand years, and how, and what the cost might be, but the signs were muddled. He ran his thumb along the Lobus Sinister, smoothing away the blood, but he did not see signs of the cup at work in the goat's flesh. He did not even see himself. Instead there was an omen of death for a strange man who would fall on a heap of rocks with his head split open, and leave blood running down the craggy stones. Other signs in the liver warned of bodies floating between weeds in deep, dark waters, and of desecrated tombs and cauldrons.

He frowned and turned the liver over, searching for clues about the present world, who ruled, and where, but none of the signs spoke of kings or jarls. There were no crowns or thrones, or swords with gilded rings. There was an impression on the head of the liver which suggested a man with long hair who looked down his nose at world, and there was Dumbledore with his beard and half moon lenses. There were also signs of a woman who stared back at him with blank eyes, and a pudgy little man with a banal smile and a strange hat.

The umbilical fissure warned of other figures in dark robes who sat at wooden podiums, facing a chair with chains and manacles hammered into the floor. A bruise in the flesh formed a rune he'd never seen before, or perhaps it was a latin letter. It looked like two mountains cast in bronze. Another mark looked like a golden pin in the shape of a pheonix, and another a black serpent. 

As for his enemies, when he studied the Pars Hostilis, he found the guts such a mess the only answer seemed to be "everyone". He found a mark that looked like a human skull on a pile of bones with a snake sliding through the bone jaw and devouring another serpent inch by bloody inch. He saw avaricious grins under masks and a man flicking his tongue like snake. He saw rats and goats, lion crests and ivory canes and wooden hammers, hands with unnaturally long fingers and red eyes.

“Oh damn me for a cursed fool!” he snapped, dropping the abused liver into it's bowl and falling back onto the floor to stare up at the ceiling. Then he thought about what he'd just said and covered his face with bloody hands, because of course that was what Godric had already done. Curse him.

And he was a fool. He’d made a whole sacrifice because he wanted answers. The gods had provided as always, but a thousand years had passed on this world since he last read any omens. He didn’t understand the iconography any more, so he was no better off then he had been an hour ago! Aker must be laughing at him. Godric certainly was.

And in a frustrated fit he grabbed the copper bowl with all the goats innards and flung it at the window, screaming. “Aaaaaarrrrgh!”

The glass shattered and the bowl, with all it's bloody contents, fell into the night.

On a window ledge Mrs. Noris, the cat, watched the eviscerated guts go flying by and then calmly returned to licking her parts under one raised leg.

The ghost of the old Friar blinked when a bloody bowl flew through his head as he was hovering out a lower window, and then some of his ghostly aura got caught in it and he found himself tugged along on a sudden mad dash for ground.

A pair of Hufflepuffs were interrupted in their snogging under a long suffering Gargolye when a clump of organs went flying by their window followed by half of the Fat Friar who was howling as he went.

And far down on the ground, a small gnome was stopped in his stealthy search for mushrooms by a large bowl of goat guts landing on his head with a CLANG. He swooned in the vegetable patch by green house three, and the Fat Friar had to go about collecting bits of himself while a dazed gnome, dripping entrails and wearing a copper bowl like a helmet screeched at him. 

Oblivious to all this, high up in his tower room, Salazar Slytherin sat staring at the remains of his divination and the body of the goat while drinking steadily from a never ending whiskey bottle. Every sip hurt going down, but he found he quite liked that. Whiskey was good, much better then ale. It made everything feel far away and less bitter and horrifying.

The blood from the goat's throat and belly was seeping into the cracks in the floor though and he really should take care of that. Whatever strange ideas the elf had, meat was too precious to waste and a sacrifice (however little you divined out of it) could grow a curse along with rot if left to decay. He had enough curses on his head. He really should not risk another. 

So he sighed and went to handle the body, taking the bottle with him.

His heart gave a bad lurch when he tried to lift the beast and his legs gave out, so he grabbed the goat by one horn instead and dragged it behind him. The door proved a small problem, it was still locked, and did not budge when he pulled the latch or told it open. He had to hiss at one of the stone snakes carved into the lintel and order it to bust the door. Which left a splintered hole in the wood and the distinct smell of burning magic behind when he left the tower room. 

He could only imagine the sight he made, a lanky, barefoot man dragging a dead goat in one hand and drinking from a bottle with the other, leaving a long trail of blood behind him, but there was no one there to see it.

The castle was dark and silent as a grave. The floors were bare, without reeds or rushes and the corridors which had always been so busy in his time, were empty. There were no stray geese or dogs or Bauchan wandering about. He felt like a dead king walking through his own burial mound, where a sad attempt to make up for the lack of real, breathing people had been made covering the castle in icons of them.

There were men made of steel with solid helms instead of faces who stood in odd corners, and the walls were covered with perfectly painted impressions of people trapped in wooden frames. Depictions of Witches and Warriors and Workers were hung everywhere in a macabre imitation of the living. Some of them even twitched as if asleep and others peered suspiciously at him as he passed.

He had to stop several times when he grew short of breath, and when he finally reached the kitchens his whole body ached. He turned a corner, pulling the dead goat behind him, and then just about gave up and screamed again when he found the entrance to the kitchens was... gone. Instead of the high arched entrance to the cellars there was a blank wall with a large painted frame, like the ones in the upper halls. Except this depicted an obscene amount of... fruit? 

He dropped the goat and leaned against the wall, panting. He was so tired, and he hurt so much. Where was Godric when he needed him? Probably off somewhere whacking at his eldermen with a sword. He would get Godric. Yes. Then the fancy Lord could carry this evil dead goat around instead. Salazar nodded against the cool wall, satisfied, and limped back up the corridor, drinking from his never ending bottle and looking for Lord of Lions. 

He went to the Great Hall because Godric loved eating almost as much as fighting and fucking. He was briefly distracted by thinking about fucking and the sweet slide of skin on skin and sucking bruises onto Godric's back, but then he remembered other times that had not been so sweet or good and stumbled when he realized that the hall was all wrong.

This was not where he and his companions had laughed over sizzling pork. They had always left the center of The Hall open to hold a hearth pit where they roasted boar on spits and huddled around the embers nursing tankards together in winter. Their hall had been busy, day or night with working or dancing or brawling. Though that was mostly on Godric and Helga's side. They each had a table set against a wall and Salazar had liked that he could always look straight across at Rowena, and have secret conversations with their eyebrows.

This hall had tables set in rows. There was no hearth pit and the place looked abandoned. There was not even a solitary chicken to disturb the chamber. This did not look like home, but there were banners hanging from the open sky with his crest, and Godric's, Rowena's, Helga's. Where was he? Why was everything dead here? Godric had said something in the rain once, something about traitors. There was no weregeld for men who betrayed their lord.

“Is this what you wanted?” he shouted to the enchanted sky above him, holding out his arms and spinning in the empty hall. “Is it? Because I am not your vassal Godric! I never was!”

He threw his bottle at the wall and it smashed there, leaving golden liquor and glass oozing down the flagstones. 

He was cursed. He was well and truly cursed, and Godric had laid it on him. The man he had once thought he would die for, or from. But his red bearded friend had not even allowed him that. Death, it seemed, was too good for Salazar Slytherin.

He leaned on a table, feeling sick, and whispered to his long dead lover. “I never even got to explain.” 

Then he laughed, bitterly, knowing exactly what the others would have said to that. Godric with his chivalry and honor, Rowena stiff with judgement, even Helga who was the only one who might have understood the rage that took him that night he was thrown out. 

“Of course,” he hiccuped. “What could I have possibly said?” 

The whiskey was spreading he noticed, running between the seems in the stones and then flooding over the floor in a pool of drink that, even in his drunken stupor, he could see was getting larger with every passing moment. It was as if the broken bottle had released a damn and somewhere a river of whiskey had been let loose. He watched with haggard indifference as it washed across his bandaged feet and the overflow surged across the hall, out the doors and down the steps. The broken remains of the bottle bubbled by the wall, bleeding whiskey, like his heart.

He swayed and sloshed his way out of the hall, following the current. Whiskey pooled over landings and round corners, down towards the cellars and caverns that Salazar had carved into dungeons to hold their enemies. 

He staggered up a large staircase, humming to himself and left wet whiskey footprints on the stone floor in drunken circles as he limped up one floor, and then another. His feet throbbed, and he thought there might have been a bit of blood, but it was too dark to see. 

He wondered if the caves beneath the dungeons had been carved into catacombs for his children, and his children's children, and so on down through the ages as his mother's folk had done.

“You are well on your way to finding out,” a smoky voice whispered in his ear and he turned to see Helga standing next to him, with wild yellow hair and an axe in hand.

“You are not real,” he mumbled.

“Of course not,” Helga smiled. “You are only seeing what you want to see. Too much drink will do that.”

She reached out and ran a finger along his lip.

“You would know all about drinking too much,” he smirked back at her.

Helga lost her smile, sadness wrinkling her eyes.

“Why did you not come to me? Did you think I would not help?”

Salazar looked away, shame eating out his heart.

“I had no time,” he whispered.

Helga's rough palm cupped his face, and oh how he wanted her, wanted to bury himself in her and with her and lie beneath her and forget this place and everything in it. She brushed her nose against his and kissed him lightly. He leaned in to deepen it but found only cold air instead. She was gone, and he was alone in an empty corridor with nothing but the shadows of memory. 

He sobbed, pressed his hands to his eyes and cried.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!”

No one answered.


End file.
